The Morphology of English Dialects: Verb-Formation in Non-standard English (Studies in English Language)

Where do dialects differ from Standard English, and why are they so remarkably resilient? This new study argues that commonly used verbs that deviate from Standard English for the most part have a long pedigree. Analysing the language use of over 120 dialect speakers, Lieselotte Anderwald demonstrates that not only are speakers justified historically in using these verbs, systematically these non-standard forms actually make more sense. By constituting a simpler system, they are generally more economical than their Standard English counterparts. Drawing on data collected from the Freiburg English Dialect Corpus (FRED), this innovative and engaging study comes directly from the forefront of this field, and will be of great interest to students and researchers of English language and linguistics, morphology and syntax.