Irish English and the Ulster Scots Controversy by Jeffrey Kallen
From: Ulster Folk Life Vol.45, 1999. (Published by Ulster Folk & Transport
Museum, Cultra)
90 ibid 152, A similar use for 'predictions' in 'Northerly texts' of the early Modern English period is cited by Traugott, E.A. History of English Syntax (London 1972) 116, Likewise, DOST includes 'shall be' among its glosses for beis, etc.
91 Montgomery and Kirk report eliciting sample sentences using do be and inflected be from university students in Belfast which did not show habitual reference (e.g. Wendy and Martin bes dating for three months and Sinead bes coming later in the evening) Given the well known tendency of grammaticality judgements of vernacular speech to be unreliable due to a range of contextual and usage factors, I would wait for further empirical evidence on this point. (On the value of grammaticality judgements in non standard English, see Wolfram, W. 'The sociolinguistic model in speech and language pathology.' In Leahy, M. and Kallen, J. (eds) Interdisciplinary Perspectives in Speech and Language Pathology (Dublin 1993) 1-2
92 Henry, Anglo-Irish Dialect, 168-172
93. Harris, J. 'Syntactic variation and dialect divergence.' Journal of Linguistics 20, (1984), 303-327; Todd, Green English, 97.
94 See also Kallen 'Tense and aspect' for a discussion of the 'generic/habitual' category in Dublin English, where inflected bees was not found.
95. See also, Henry, 'Linguistic survey', 133
96 ibid
97 Kallen, 'Tense and aspect' 4-7
98 Bliss, A.. 'English in the south of Ireland' in Trudgill, P. op. Cit., 143
99 Henry 'Linguistic survey, 133, O'Neill, P. 'A North County Dublin glossary' Bealoideas 17, (1947) 264
100 Henry, Anglo Irish Dialect 168-169, the Sligo usage is in my own data files, supplied by Margaret Mannion
101 Bertz, loc, cit; Kallen, 'Tense and aspect'.
102 Beecher, op. Cit., Moylan, S. The Language of Kilkenny (Dublin 1996)
103 Joyce, op. Cit. 87
104 Citations in Traynor, op. Cit., imply a more general extension; no note on localisation is included in Macafee, C.. A Concise Ulster Dictionary (Oxford 1996)
105 Lynch, P. An Introduction to the Knowledge of the Irish Language (Dublin 1815) 28
106 O'Donovan, J.A. Grammar of the Irish Language (Dublin 1845) 151 draws an explicit parallel between the Irish verb forms and both does be and bees in Irish English. No distinction is suggested between the two Irish English forms.
107 todd, Green English, 97
108 There are a number of problems with such straightforward Irish-based analyses. Crucially, Irish dean 'do' does not provide a model for the use of English do as an aspectual marker, let alone one one of generic/habitual aspect. It is particularly important that Irish dean as a dynamic verb, cannot co-occur with stative bi unlike parallel Irish English examples discussed above.
109 The literature on periphrastic do is extensive; for specific reference to Irish English, note Kallen, J. 'The co-occurrence of do and be in Hiberno-English' in Harris et al op cit., 133-147; Stein, D. The Semantics of Syntactic Change; Aspects of the Evolution of do in English (Berlin 1990) 16-21ff; and Tristram 'DO periphrasis'
110 Kallen, 'Co-occurrence' 143
111 Traugott, E.C. 'Syntax' in Hogg, R. (ed) The Cambridge History of the English Language, vol. 1 (Cambridge 1992) 182-183. On inflected bees in early modern English, see fn 90 above
112 Wright, J. (ed) The English Dialect Dictionary, vol. 2 (London 1900) 99
113 Ihalainen O. 'Periphrastic do in affirmative sentences in the dialect of East Somerset' Neuphilologische Mittelungen 77 (1976) 608 - 622
114 Weltens, B. 'Non standard periphrastic do in the dialects of south west Britain' Love and Language 3 no. 8 (1983) 61
115 Tristram 'DO periphrasis'
116 The Oxford English Dictionary restricts modern use to Scottish and northern dialects
117 Possible Scots Gaelic influence on Scots lies outside the scope of this paper lack of generic/habitual do in Scots would suggest that Gaelic transfer is not relevant to this variable in Ulster.
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