Gender making in Wessex-type English.

“It is usually claimed that English nouns lost their grammatical gender during the historical period called Middle English, roughly 1100-1500. But this claim needs some qualification. What actually happened during the Middle English period was that more overt gender marking of English nouns gave way to more covert marking. As in Lyons (1968:281-8), the term ‘gender’ is used here to refer to morphosyntactic classes of nouns. It is true that the loss of adjective concord in Middle English made gender marking less overt; but Modern English still retains some deter­miner concord which allows us to classify nouns (Christophersen and Sandved 1969). In addition, Modern English (ModE), like Old English (OE) and Middle English (ME), possesses pronominal distinctions which enable us to classify nouns.

We can distinguish at least three distinctly different types of gender marking along the continuum from most overt to most covert. The most overt involves the marking of gender in the morphology of the noun itself, as in Swahili (Lyons 1968:284-6). Near the middle of the overt-covert continuum we could place the marking of gender in adnominals such as adjectives and deter­miners. At or near the covert end of the scale we find the marking of gender in pronominal systems.

During all three main historical stages of the English language (OE, ME, ModE) one has been able to assign nouns to three syntactic classes called MASCULINE, FEMININE and NEUTER. However, throughout the recorded history of English this three-way gender marking has become less and less overt. In OE all three types of gender marking were present. But even in OE the intrinsic marking (by noun inflections) was often am­biguous in that it gave more information about noun declension (ie paradigm class) than about gender (ie concord class). The least ambiguous marking of gender in OE was provided by the adnominals traditionally called demonstratives and definite ar­ticles. In addition, gender ‘discord’ sometimes occurred in OE, in that the intrinsic gender marking (if any) and the adnominal marking, on the one hand, did not always agree with the gender of the pronominal, on the other hand. Standard ME underwent the loss of a three-way gender distinction in the morphology of both the nominals and the adnominals. This meant that Standard ModE nouns were left with only the most covert type of three-way gender marking, that of the pronominals. Hence we can assign a Standard ModE noun to the gender class MASCULINE, FEMININE or NEUTER by depending only on whether it selects he, she or it respectively as its proform.

During the ME and Early ModE periods the south-western (here called Wessex-type) dialects of England diverged from Standard English in their developments of adnominalandpronominal subsystems. In particular, the demonstratives of Standard English lost all trace of gender marking, whereas in south-western dialects their OE three-way distinction of MASCULINE/FEMININE/NEUTER developed into a two-way MASS/COUNT distinction which has survived in some Wessex-type dialects of Late ModE. The result in Wessex was that the two-way distinction in adnominals such as demonstratives and in­definites came into partial conflict with the three-way distinction in pronominals”. (№18, p.31-32)

- Nowadays in the south-western dialects the pronouns ‘he’ / ‘she’ are used instead of a noun:

e.g. My ooman put her bonnet there last year, and the birds laid their eggs in him. (= it)

Wurs my shovel? I aa got’im; him’s her. (= Where is my shovel? I’ve got it. That’s it.)

- In the south-western dialects objects are divided into two categories:

1) countable nouns (a tool, a tree), and the pronouns ‘he’ / ‘she’ are used with them

2) uncountable nouns (water, dust), and the pronoun ‘it’ is used with them.

The pronoun ‘he’ is used towards women.

Numerals.

In south-western dialects the compound numerals (21-99) are pronounced as: five and fifty, six and thirty.

In Devonshire instead of ‘the second’ ‘twoth’ is used (the twenty-twoth of April).

 

Adjectives.

In all dialects of the south-west -er, -est are used in the comparative and superative degrees with one-, two- and more syllabic adjectives:

e.g. the naturaler

  the seasonablest

  delightfuller (-est)

  worser - worsest (Dw.)

- The words: ‘gin’, ‘an’, ‘as’, ‘nor’, ‘till’, ‘by’, ‘to’, ‘in’, ‘on’ are used instead of ‘than’ in the comparative forms:

e.g. When the lad there wasn’t scarce the height of that stool, and a less size on (= than) his brother…;

  That’s better gin naething;

  More brass inney (= than you) hadd’n;

  It’s moor in bargain (= more than a bargain).

- The word ‘many’ is used with uncountable nouns

e.g. many water / milk

- The word ‘first’ is often used in the meaning of ‘the next’:

e.g. The first time I gang to the smiddie I’ll give it to him.

  Will you come Monday first or Monday eight days?

 

Pronouns.

- The forms of the nominative case are often used instead of the forms of the objective case and vice versa:

e.g. Oi don’t think much o’ they (= of them).

  Oi went out a-walkin wi’ she (= with her).

  Oi giv ut t’ he (= it) back again.

  Us (= we) don’t want t’ play wi’ he (= him).

  Har (= she) oon’t speak t’ th’ loikes o’ we (= us).

  When us (= we) is busy, him (= he) comes and does a day’s work for we (= us).

- The pronoun ‘mun’ (‘min’) is used in those cases, when in the literary language ‘them’ is used:

e.g. put mun in the house

gie mun to me

I mind (= remember) the first time I seed mun.

- ‘Mun’ is also used instead of ‘him’, ‘it’

e.g. let min alone

  it would sarve un right if I telled the parson of mun

- Instead of ‘those’, ‘them’ is used:

e.g. I mind none of them things.

Give us them apples.

Fetch them plaates off o’ th’ pantry shelf.

- In the south-western dialects at the beginning of the sentenu the personal and impersonal pronouns are often dropped.

- “Whom” is never used in the south-western dialects. Instead of it ‘as’ / ‘at’ is used:

e.g. That’s the chap as (or what) his uncle was hanged.

  The man’ at his coat’s torn.

- The nominative case of the personal pronouns is also used before ‘selves’:

e.g. we selves (Somerseshire, Devonshire)

- The standard demonstrative pronoun ‘this’ is used in the south-western dialects as: ‘this’, ‘this here’, ‘thease’, ‘thisn’, ‘thisna’.

- The standard demonstrative pronoun ‘that’ is used in the south-western dialects as: ‘thatn’, ‘thickumy’, ‘thilk’:

e.g. I suppose I could have told thee thilk.

- ‘Those’ is never used in the south-western dialects.

“thir’ ans” is used instead of it.