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‘[T]hunder storms is verry dangese in this countrey they come in less than a minnits notice…’

The Northern Subject Rule in Southern Irish English

Bibliographic Data

ID17565272
AuthorsKevin Mccafferty (0000-0002-4668-9187, University of Tromsø, corresponding author)
Year2004
Volume25
Issue1
Pages51-79
Publication date2004-05-12
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueEnglish World-Wide A Journal of Varieties of English (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0172-8865 • E-ISSN: 1569-9730
PublisherJohn Benjamins Publishing Company (PUBLISHER • NL)
DOI10.1075/eww.25.1.04mcc
OpenAlexW2058864280
LanguageEN
Citations received7

It has been suggested that use of the Northern Subject Rule (NSR) in Southern Irish English (SIrE) is the result of diffusion from Ulster-Scots dialects of the North of Ireland, where many Scots settled in the 17th century. 19th-century Irish-Australian emigrant letters show the main NSR constraint — which permits plural verbal -s with noun phrase subjects but prohibits it with an adjacent third plural pronoun — to have been as robust in varieties of SIrE as it was in Northern Irish English (NIrE) of the same period. Before British colonisation of Ireland, the NSR was present in dialects of Northern England and the North Midlands, regions which contributed substantially to English settlement in the South of Ireland. It is therefore suggested here that the NSR in SIrE might be a retention of a vernacular feature of NSR dialects that were taken to Ireland from the English North and North Midlands rather than a feature that diffused southwards in Ireland after 1600

Ethnology · Genealogy · Geography · Irish · Linguistics · Northern ireland · Notice · Plural · Political science · Scots · Varieties of English · Historical Studies of British Isles · History · Law · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Linguistics and language evolution

  • Old Northumbrian Verbal Morphosyntax and the (Northern) Subject Rule

    Marcelle Cole•Old Northumbrian Verbal…•2014

  • Victories fastened in grammar

    Open Access•Kevin Mccafferty•English Today•2011

  • Patterns of Verbal -s in the Varieties of English Today

    Open Access•Christina Bismark•Linguaculture•2010

  • Perception, cognition, and linguistic structure

    Open Access•Erez Levon, Isabelle Buchstaller•Language Variation and Change•2015

  • Appalachian English in southern Indiana? The evidence from verbal - s

    Open Access•Brian José•Language Variation and Change•2007

  • Irish English in emigrant letters

    Open Access•Kevin Mccafferty•World Englishes•2017

  • The Northern Subject Rule in the Irish diaspora

    Dania Jovanna Bonne, Dania Jovanna Bonness•English World-Wide A Journal of…•2017

Citations per year0.37
Citation span2007 - 2017 (11)
Highly citedNo

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