the were-subjunctive in british rural dialects marrying corpus and questionnaire data

The Were-Subjunctive in British Rural Dialects: Marrying Corpus and Questionnaire DataAuthor(s): Andrew Hardie and Tony McenerySource: Computers and the Humanities, Vol. 37, No. 2 (May, 2003), pp. 205-228Published by: SpringerStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30204892 .Accessed: 29/10/2013 05:35

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Computers and the Humanities 37: 205-228, 2003. 205 a 2003 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

The Were-Subjunctive in British Rural Dialects:

Marrying Corpus and Questionnaire Data*

ANDREW HARDIE and TONY MCENERY Department of Linguistics and Modern English Language, Lancaster University, Bailrigg, Lancaster, LA I 4Y UK E-mail: a.hardie@ lancaster ac.uk

Introduction

This paper examines the were-subjunctive in British rural dialects in the light of data from two sources: the Survey of English Dialects (SED) questionnaire, and the Leeds Corpus of English Dialect (LCED), consisting of transcribed recordings made at the same time as the data was gathered for the questionnaire. We begin by surveying previous work on the subjunctive in general, and the were-subjunctive in dialect grammar in particular (section 1), culminating in a discussion of the SED data on the were-subjunctive. We then move on in section 2 to pose two hypotheses: firstly that the SED does not provide a complete picture of this phenomenon and thus corpus data may be of use enriching it; secondly a "null" hypothesis that no were-subjunctive is consistently marked in the dialects in question. We then look at the methodology and data used (section 3), describing the source of our data, the LCED. We also note some potential difficulties (3.1) before moving on to discuss the choice of an area of England to examine (3.2) and of texts to analyse (3.3). In section 3.4 we describe the mark-up scheme used in the analysis of the texts, and in 3.5 the process of annotation and extraction of results form the texts. These results are presented in section 4. We consider the corpus data in relation to the questionnaire data (4.1), and to our two hypotheses (4.2 and 4.3). In our Conclu- sion (section 5) we summarise the implications of this study and consider some possible future routes of enquiry into the were-subjunctive in the rural dialects of England.

1. The Were-Subjunctive: Three Overviews

We will begin with a brief survey of work on the subjunctive in general before moving on to the were-subjunctive, and, in particular, the were-subjunctive in the rural dialects of British English.


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206 ANDREW HARDIE AND TONY MCENERY

1.1. THE SUBJUNCTIVE IN MODERN STANDARD ENGLISH

The subjunctive1 can generally be defined as the verbal form associated with subordinate clauses (Lyons, 1968, p. 312). However, it is not entirely clear that modem British English possesses such a form. Old English (OE) clearly did; in OE, verb conjugations for the subjunctive and indicative were distinct for the majority of but not all person/number/tense combinations (Mitchell and Robinson, 1992, pp. 43- 46, 51). However, these inflected forms were lost over time. Today in standard British English the subjunctive is distinct only in the third person singular present tense, contrasting with the -s inflection (e.g. indicative it sings versus subjunctive it sing), and in parts of the irregular verb be (e.g. subjunctive be versus indicative am, is or are, or in the past tense, indicative it was versus subjunctive it were). It is this past tense of be which is the focus of this study and which we refer to throughout as the were-subjunctive.

For most of the twentieth century, linguists either claimed that the subjunctive had died out in English (e.g. Kruisinga and Eraes, 1941; Harsh, 1968; Palmer, 1974), that its use was in decline (Jespersen, 1924; Leech, 1971), or, more rarely, that it was, so to speak, alive and well (Kiercek, 1954). However, from the 1970s onwards opinion has hardened around the view that the subjunctive, while it exists and is of interest, is in decline. Quirk et al. (1985, pp. 155-158) suggest that the subjunctive "is generally an optional and stylistically marked variant of other constructions". Their description of the subjunctive is worthy of brief discussion here, as it has provided the base model for the majority of subsequent research, and the research presented in this paper. For the present subjunctive,2 they distin- guish three uses: mandative (in that-clauses introduced by expressions "of demand, recommendation, proposal, resolution, intention etc."), optative and formulaic3 (in set phrases and main clauses expressing a wish, such as 'Be that as it may', 'God save the queen', or 'Suffice it to say'). The past tense were-subjunctive is described as having one use: "in formal style in hypothetical conditional clauses and in other constructions with hypothetical meaning" (ibid.: 158). They also comment that "The were-subjunctive may be regarded as a fossilized inflection: it is nowadays a less usual alternative to the hypothetical past indicative" (ibid.: 1013).

However, in spite of the work of Quirk et al. on the subjunctive, it is still the case that its study in English is neglected. Most recent grammatical research has tended to ignore the subjunctive or touch on it only briefly. For example, Biber et al. (1999), in an entirely corpus-based grammar of English, mention the subjunctive only in passing, noting for example that "subjunctive forms, which are possible in certain finite dependent clauses, do not show subject-verb concord" (ibid.: 180). Likewise, most writers in theoretical linguistics do not discuss the subjunctive in depth. An exception is Giv6n (1993, 1995) who sees the subjunctive as conveying modality in a similar way to modal verbs. What Quirk et al. (1985) would describe as the mandative subjunctive, Giv6n characterises semantically as covering a range of meanings: intended or weak manipulation, preference or aversion, and anxiety



THE WERE-SUBJUNCTIVE IN BRITISH RURAL DIALECTS 207

or low certainty in a report. This range is also expressible by means of modal verbs. Like Quirk et al. (1985), Giv6n does not suggest that English lacks a

subjunctive; but concurs that "the old grammatical category of subjunctive has almost disappeared" (1993, p. 274).

Away from general grammars of the sort just discussed, work on the subjunctive has grown over the past twenty years, especially with relation to the mandative

subjunctive (e.g. Turner, 1980; Hundt, 1998). In large part this interest arises from the supposed higher frequency of the mandative subjunctive in American as

opposed to British English (Quirk et al. 1985, p. 157, established empirically by Johansson and Norheim, 1988).

It is clear then that the status of the subjunctive in modern Standard English (SE) is somewhat contentious. This paper will focus on an exploration of the status of the were-subjunctive in the rural dialects of England in the mid-twentieth century. There are two principal reasons for this focus. Firstly, as a marginal area of dialect

grammar which, as detailed below, has not been researched in any great detail prior to this study, the matter is of interest in its own right. Secondly, as discussed in section 2. below, the were-subjunctive is suitable to be used as a demonstration of the marriage of corpus-based and questionnaire-derived empirical data. The

were-subjunctive, rather than the present subjunctive is focussed upon because the questionnaire under consideration, that of the SED (Orton et al., 1963-1971), elicited data only on the were-subjunctive, as discussed below.

1.2. RESEARCH INTO THE WERE-SUBJUNCTIVE IN ENGLISH DIALECTS

The initial focus of dialectology was phonological/phonetic variation. Con- sequently, compared to their phonology and lexis, the grammar of dialects was at first under-researched (Chambers and Trudgill, 1998, p. 14). This is not to say that there was no work on grammar. Grammar has been studied by dialectologists since the nineteenth century,4 Research into variation in grammar has however become more important in the last twenty years - see, for example, the studies listed by Kirk (1985, p. 148), or any of the wide range of variationist grammar studies done in the subsequent decade and a half. There has also been some research on dialect grammar in the field of corpus linguistics (e.g. the work of Ihalainen, 1988, discussed below).

However, there does not seem to have been any study of the subjunctive in dialect grammar. Many works describe the grammar of one or more dialects without mentioning it: see for example Trudgill and Chambers (1991). Ihalainen (1988) discusses the use of were versus was in the speech of some dialect speakers in the South of England,5 but does not consider the were-subjunctive as a possible motivation for variation between these forms. The lack of attention paid to the subjunctive is not particularly surprising; grammar is a large subject and the subjunctive - as far as English is concerned - is a very small part of it.




A number of the corpus-based studies of the mandative subjunctive (e.g. Hundt, 1998) look at dialectal differences, but only on a national scale (e.g. British versus American standard English, and so on). In short, there has not been any detailed

corpus-based enquiry into the subject which we address in this paper. Even the

larger dialect studies and surveys have not dwelt on the subjunctive. In Wright's (1905) dialect grammar, morphology is almost an afterthought to phonology, and the subjunctive is dealt with equally tersely: "In the dialects of Ireland, England and Wales the subjunctive has entirely gone out of use." He suggests, however, that it is still found sometimes in Scotland. Going back to the Middle English period, Harsh's (1968) study suggests that there was "general inconsistency" in use of the subjunctive as opposed to other structures across dialects even at this

early point. In the Survey of British Dialect Grammar (Cheshire et al., 1993),6 there is no reference to the subjunctive at all.7 In the Survey of English Dialects (SED; Orton et al., 1963-1971), only one item on a huge questionnaire relates

directly to the subjunctive. However, the very large quantity of data collected in the SED means that this one item does represent a substantial amount of information.

1.3. THE WERE-SUBJUNCTIVE IN THE SED QUESTIONNAIRE DATA

Thus, the main pre-existing source of information on the subjunctive in rural

English dialects is the SED basic data. Unlike more recent studies, the SED questionnaire looked only at the were-subjunctive and not at the present subjunctive (Orton, 1962, p. 99). Forms were elicited for the were-subjunctive following I, she and we (compared to I, she, they and we for the indicative). Following from the focus of the SED on the were-subjunctive, we decided to focus on that also to explore how the SED and the LCED could interact to provide a richer description of the use of the were-subjunctive in English rural dialects.

In the Linguistic Atlas of England (LAE; Orton et al., 1978), the data for the third person singular and first person plural were-subjunctives are mapped out in

isogloss form (maps M24 and M25 respectively). These maps are not in themselves remarkable, each showing that some areas of England have was and some were for the subjunctive. However, a comparison compared with the corresponding maps for the indicative form (M21 and M22), is somewhat surprising.

The data from these four maps is shown in composite form in Figures 1 and 2. These two maps give, in effect, an overview of what the SED informants reported as their usage for the indicative and subjunctive past tense of be. Note that in placing two sets of isoglosses onto each map, it was necessary to omit some of the more detailed information on the original LAE maps, e.g. instances of one form in the 'territory' of the other form, i.e. on the 'wrong side' of the isogloss.

Figures 1 and 2 confirm, as Wright (1905) suggested, that much of the country uses the same form for both indicative and subjunctive, particularly the most northerly area, Cornwall/Devon, East Anglia, and the area south-east of London.




Sind. & subj. both was SCOTLAND ind. & subj. both were

ind. was, subj. were ind. were, subj. was ind. and subj. both weren ind. weren, subj. were

WALES ,:aar ....

,

aii!., .,' ' ."'

; a :::

/ ..

., .. ......, ...a . , a .,

a ......... 4a:a- ...... " a " .. a~ .....


ind. & subj. both was SCOTLAND ind. & subj. both were

ind. was, subj. were ind. were, subj. was

No data available for this area

WALES

Figure 2. if she were: the data from the SED on the third person singular were-subjunctive (based on LAE maps M21 and M24, Orton et al., 1978).

of was and were.8 It is well-known that questionnaires provide only a partial guide to grammatical usage.

For example, there are many variables that could have caused a respondent to give different forms for indicative and subjunctive where no such absolute distinction exists, or conversely, to give the same form for indicative and subjunctive when there is some quantifiable distinction made. Such variables include the effect of register-switching to a more standard English-like form and free or socially conditioned variation of indicative or subjunctive forms within dialect or idiolect.




The one-word answers simply do not yield enough data for a full description of the

were-subjunctive to be developed on the basis of the SED data alone, at least in the middle of England. While they are positive evidence for the occurrence of the forms elicited, they are not and cannot be evidence for the non-occurrence of forms not elicited - and it is this which we would need to be more certain regarding the

were-subjunctive. It is thus clear that the status of the were-subjunctive in English dialects is still

an open question. Does it exist, and if so, what forms does it take? The SED data, while a basis for further research, does not provide a full answer. By the same token, an answer founded on a larger base of data could usefully assess the nature of the published SED evidence. But the question is interesting for another reason as well. Trudgill (1999) asserts that "there is a tendency for forms to spread from non-standard dialects to the standard." Is this indeed what has happened with the

were-subjunctive? If so, we should not expect to find it in non-standard dialects, as its disappearance there would be a cause (or at least a precedent phenomenon) of its current uncertain status in SE.

The evidence on the question is mixed. Set against the SED data, which may suggest the existence of a were-subjunctive in certain areas, are Harsh (1968), who finds the dialect subjunctive unstable in the ME period, and Wright (1905), who is of the same opinion in relation to rural dialects pre-1900. The aim of this paper is to enrich the SED data on the basis of a different empirical methodology, having first demonstrated the value of such an enrichment, and thus to find a more reliable answer to the question of the were-subjunctive as used by the SED informants. The cornerstone of this different methodology is that the largest available amounts of relevant natural language data are analysed, using a mode of analysis which is fairly common in corpus-based studies. However, before outlining the corpus investigated and the methods used, we would like to introduce two hypotheses.

2. Two Hypotheses

The "literal" and simple-minded interpretation of the subjunctive isoglosses, criti- cised above, is dependent on an assumption that the indicative-subjunctive distinction must be qualitative and absolute; i.e. one form solely and exclusively used for the indicative, and one form solely and exclusively used for the subjunctive. This

study does not assume this. Rather, we consider it possible, perhaps probable, that the indicative-subjunctive distinction should be quantitative - a matter of degree reflected in the proportions of forms used by individual respondents, proportions which may be influenced by the variables cited above.

Therefore, we will examine the data for signs that different forms are used to different degrees, which constitutes our first hypothesis. Should such a pattern emerge, we may thenceforth take as read the need for the questionnaire data to be refined and enriched on the basis of other empirical data in order to make robust statements about the nature of the were-subjunctive in the dialects in question.




With regard to this, it is hypothesised that the idiolects of the SED informants do not possess a were-subjunctive - or, to be more precise, that the occurrence of an instance of the past tense of be in a context where we might expect the were- subjunctive to occur does not make any discernable proportional difference to the form (was/were) taken by that instance. This is proposed as a kind of "null" hypothesis, although not in the statistical sense. This is a hypothesis found more than once in the literature: Wright's (1905) observation that English dialects possess no subjunctive; and Harsh's (1968) finding that even in Middle English the dialect subjunctive was disappearing. To this we may add Trudgill's (1999) suggestion that changes spread from non-standard to standard varieties - if this is true the death of the were-subjunctive ought to be further advanced in non-standard dialects than in SE. Given these prior claims, it seemed wise to take the "null" hypothesis approach and to then look at whether the data supports or contradicts it.

The aim of this study is therefore to test the following hypotheses: 1. In both the indicative and (should it be consistently marked)9 the subjunctive,

the form used for the past tense of be will not be invariable in the speech of any given informant; thus the picture supplied by the SED data is not complete and the corpus data described below can be used to enrich it significantly.

2. There is, in English rural dialects, no were-subjunctive10 that is consistently marked with a form different to the past indicative of be.

3. Overview of Methodology and Data: The LCED

When the SED fieldworkers were completing the questionnaires in the localities across England, they made tape recordings of themselves interviewing some informants on a range of topics: the informant's childhood, their job and what it involved, anecdotes, and so on. Other informants were tape-recorded later on, although a recording was not made at every locality. The recordings are in effect monologues by the informants.

These tape recordings have been used in past studies - for example, Orton used them while editing the SED raw data (as Kirk et al., 1985 report). However, they have not until very recently been exploited as a substantial independent resource for the study of dialect. Because the informants were mainly persons whose language was acquired in the late nineteenth or very early twentieth century, these recordings are among the oldest primary evidence we have of traditional rural dialects.

Recently, orthographic transcriptions made from these recordings have been made available in the form of a machine-readable corpus, known as the Leeds Corpus of English Dialects (LCED).11 This corpus is about 800,000 words in length, over 314 files. It is thus now possible to use the recordings to assess, and build on, the results of the questionnaire in the light of the respondents' usage in attested samples of discourse. This paper does this with the questionnaire data concerning the were-subjunctive, using the methodology detailed in this section.




3.1. POTENTIAL DIFFICULTIES

Some potential flaws in this approach should be noted. Firstly, the conversations in the LCED were not recorded in a natural situation for the informants - at least

by comparison with the recording of spoken texts for modem corpora such as the BNC. In some ways, in fact, the circumstances in which the recordings were made were as artificial as those under which the data for the questionnaire was elicited. This reduces the value of the LCED as a resource independent from the limitations of the SED questionnaire. As the recordings do not contain the most naturalistic language imaginable, it is impossible to infer from them how the informants would have spoken had the fieldworker and tape recorder not been there. However, the fact that both the questionnaire and the corpus have limitations is not to deny their worth. Rather it should underline why one might wish to draw on them both in concert in the pursuit of a research question.

A second problem is that the majority of LCED texts12 are quite short. This means that for each respondent, the amount of data is limited. Thus the number of instances of was/were available for each respondent is unlikely to be very large. This means that conclusions drawn on the basis of this data cannot be fully rigorous. However, although it is always nice to deal in large quantities of data where trends can be shown to be statistically significant, there are cases, such as this, where one example is enough. Since one example is all that we have in the questionnaire, even a single instance in the corpus may represent a substantial

improvement to our overall picture. A more fundamental flaw to the approach of using LCED data to enrich the

picture given by the SED data is that the questionnaire was so large that more than one informant was often needed to complete it. However, in most cases only one informant has been recorded on tape. This means that there is no guarantee that the speaker in the text is the same person who answered the part of the questionnaire containing the question on the were-subjunctive. All that can be said for certain is that the two individuals live in the same village and are taken to be members of the same speech community. There is nothing that can be done about this. It is obviously an oversimplification to assume that a village is a homogenous language area, as idiolects will vary even if dialect doesn't. However, it is necessary to

approach the data as if this assumption were indeed valid.

3.2. THE CHOICE OF AN AREA TO STUDY

As has been indicated (see Figures 1 and 2), the SED/LAE data for the were- subjunctive show a chaotic situation in a large area in the central England. Many dozens of localities are contained within this area. Looking at all of them would be a very time consuming task, hence we decided to focus on a 'test case', an area of the country which could be looked at in detail, and which was fairly representativel3 of other parts of England. The area chosen consists of Dorset,




31 1 4 N ~24" 3

lop oft; 04 02 .3 .4 )

Vaf

31

3

.45

Oi-.

it a

C "~

-( ,"9 1~

r

Figure 3. The area under investigation (detail of the map in Orton, 1962, p. 30; see below for

county codes).

substantial parts of Wiltshire and Somerset, one locality in Hampshire and two in Berkshire.14 Figure 3 shows the network of localities in this area.

As a comparison with Figures 1 and 2 shows, this area is suitable because the SED data suggests a distinct were-subjunctive for both the third person singular and first person plural forms in at least part of it. However, it is bordered by areas in which the indicative and subjunctive are supposed to be identical and is not directly connected to the confusion found in the Midlands. Thus, it can be looked at in isolation more easily than if an area directly adjacent to other allegedly subjunctive- distinguishing areas were chosen.

3.3. THE CHOICE OF TEXTS FOR ANALYSIS

Since some localities lack recordings, and therefore have no text in LCED, it is not possible to investigate every locality within the area in Figure 3. Those LCED texts which were available, and thus included in the investigation, are listed below. Also listed are four texts added as a control, from localities in Cornwall, Northum- berland and Cumberland: localities which, according to the SED, do not show any indicative-subjunctive contrast, and are a long way from any area that does so. The names of the villages referred to by the locality codes can be found in Orton (1962, p. 32).




Table L The 27 texts examined for evidence of a were-subjunctive

Control texts:

Northumberland (1): NB2

Cumberland (2): CU1 Cornwall (36): C05 C06

Test texts:

Somerset (31): SO1 S02 S03 S04 S06 SO10 SO11 S012 S013 Wiltshire (32): W2A W2B W3 W4 W6 W7 Berkshire (33): BRK2 BRK4

Dorset (38): DO1 D02 D03 D04 DO5

Hampshire (39): HAl

3.4. THE MARK-UP SCHEME USED FOR THE INVESTIGATION

The approach to the data taken here is, simply, to find every instance of were or was in the text, evaluate it, and then try to discern any evidence of a subjunctive form consistently distinct from the indicative. This approach means that the analysis is more reliable than it might otherwise have been. Previous corpus-based studies of the subjunctive (e.g. Deutschmann, 1998; Hundt, 1998) have searched for examples of subjunctive contexts, and then looked at what verb occupies the 'slot'. The problem with this, which Deutschmann (1998) appreciates, is that many examples can slip through the net, precisely because it is so hard to define a subjunctive context unambiguously and thus create an appropriate search pattern. While a search for forms of the mandative (present) subjunctive, such as Deutschmann's, must - short of manually checking thousands of lexical verbs - rely on such a search pattern, we are fortunate that in looking at the were-subjunctive we have another option available to us. By looking for all examples of was or were, and only then attempting to decide whether they are indicative or subjunctive, this study avoids the problem of complex search criteria.

The main tool for the analysis of the verb-forms found was a basic mark-up scheme, which is used to note after each occurrence of was or were the necessary data about its usage.

The most crucial item of information given by this scheme is whether the instance being annotated is indicative or subjunctive. This sounds straightforward, but is in fact somewhat problematic. To say whether or not an instance of was/were is indicative or subjunctive, it is necessary to have a precise definition of the subjunctive, more precise than the working definition given at the beginning of this paper. However, to use too precise a description of the SE subjunctive in the analysis would be to prejudge the nature of the subjunctive in these dialects before any data is examined.




For instance, Quirk et al. (1985, p. 158) say that the were-subjunctive may be found "in adverbial clauses introduced by such conjunctions as if, as if, as though, though, and in nominal clauses after verbs like wish and suppose." This is no doubt a good definition for SE; however, there is no reason to assume a priori that it applies to rural dialects. In other languages the subjunctive appears in a wide

variety of subordinate clauses (e.g. in French the conjunction bien que is followed

by the subjunctive; its English translation although need not be). There is no reason that a dialect of English should not follow a like pattern.

Therefore, ideally we would define three contexts to be marked up: main clauses

(definitely an indicative context), hypothetical clauses such as those defined by Quirk et al. (definitely a subjunctive context), and other subordinate clauses (potentially either, since we do not know what is and is not subjunctive in the idiolect of the informant in question). However, such a three-way distinction is unworkable. In the SED questionnaire, the 'indicative' form is elicited by means of a fill-the-

gap sentence where the gap to be filled by was or were is inside a subordinate clause (Orton, 1962, p. 99). This is unfortunate as it means that, for a comparison between this investigation and the SED data to be at all meaningful, the unspoken assumption that any non-hypothetical clause is an indicative context will have to be maintained. Thus, in effect, Quirk et al.'s (1985) definition of the were-subjunctive is adhered to, though this is not the ideal situation.

The mark-up scheme must also obviously note the person and number of the

subject,15 as these are factors that are known to have an effect on the form a verb takes in English. It would also be desirable to include in the mark-up scheme some means of noting other factors about the instance of was/were and its clause: for example, is the verb in final position? Is it the main verb or auxiliary - does it indicate continuous aspect or passive voice? Is the sentence a question or a statement? Is there a clitic n't attached to the verb? These and other factors could easily have an effect on the form taken, was or were. Studies have been conducted that demonstrate the importance of such factors to similar phenomena; for example, Cheshire (1982) notes that in the dialect of the Reading area, the inflection of the verb do varies depending on whether it is a main or auxiliary verb. Similarly, in a discussion of was and were in English dialects, Ihalainen (1988) finds that for some speakers, the form depends on whether or not the verb is in final position in the sentence.

However, although this information would be useful, for two main reasons it was decided not to mark any such details up on the data. Firstly, analysis has to

stop somewhere. Every variable added to the analysis means breaking down the data into subsets, resulting in fewer instances appearing in each category. It would be ridiculous to attempt to compare the ratio of was to were as a final position auxiliary verb in its passive as opposed to its continuous usage, for example. The LCED would not yield enough data to do so. Secondly, it is not strictly necessary, for current purposes, to find out exactly what drives the was/were variation. It is enough simply to examine whether, and to what degree, the subjunctive drives it.




we were snowed up here uh one time (D02)

Chickens and that. And uh lead the pony, when we was lawn mowing. All jobs like that there. (HA1)

When we chaps were sitting in the front desk, he'd come round (W2A)

Figure 4. Examples of the mark-up scheme.

The mark-up scheme is therefore as follows:

Table II. The markup scheme in full

Field 1 - person 2 - number 3 - type of context

Possible 1 (st person) S (ingular) I (ndicative context)

Mark-up (including indefinite pronouns,

Options someone, anybody, etc.)

2 (nd person) P (lural) H (ypothetical context)

3 (rd person) X (unknown)

All combinations of symbols are possible, except with X: the code 2X is used for verbs with a you subject, since you is not determinate for number. The code UUU was used for examples whose mark-up was not clear. Finally, in order that no data from the utterances of the fieldworker should enter the analysis, any fieldworker was/were are given the code ZZZ, meaning solely: exclude from consideration. There follow some examples of marked-up phrases, in which the annotation appears following was/were in an SGML element.

Deciding what number agreement the example of was/were should be considered to have was sometimes problematic. For example, the following sentences were encountered: "That were Porter and Harry Porter" (DOl); "it was agricultural engineers" (BRK4). The decision was taken always to mark up the number of the clause's syntactic subject (i.e. singular in the examples quoted), in order to ensure consistency across the data. Ambiguous cases were decided on the basis of the discourse context.

The full list of what are deemed to be 'hypothetical contexts' are as follows:

* In adverbial clauses beginning with if, as if, though, as though * In clauses beginning with whether (this can be a synonym for if) * In adverbial clauses with hypothetical meaning, no subordinate conjunction

and subject-verb inversion (e.g. Were I a very rich man, I would ...) * In nominal clauses after verbs such as wish, suppose.




A problem with linking the subjunctive to hypothetical contexts is that not even SE uses the were-subjunctive invariably in such contexts, as many have suggested and as Deutschmann (1998) demonstrates. It may, therefore, be of very little value to define a 'subjunctive context' if verbs in that context need not be subjunctive! However, indicative and subjunctive instances of was and were have to be differentiated somehow, and this seems the best available option.

3.5. PROCESSING THE TEXTS

With the mark-up scheme designed, and tested on some corpus data not associated with the LCED,16 the texts were then processed. First, all the examples of was/were in each text were picked out. This was done using simple concordancing which found all such examples, and highlighted them within the surrounding text. The form wad was also highlighted; from personal experience of the data, we knew this to be a form used in the orthographic transcriptions, representing a non- standard realisation of was (most frequently, before n't). In the analysis, wad was put together, where appropriate, with was.

The form wa is also found, usually before n't, but this was not included in the concordancing procedure, for two reasons. Firstly, it is extremely rare in the corpus. Secondly, it is ambiguous; it is a weak-form either for was or for were, but it is impossible to tell which without access to the original sound recording (and perhaps even with access). Since the sound files were not available to us, and only a very few examples would be omitted, wa was eliminated from consideration. Also ignored are instances of was/were that are standardisations of other forms, e.g. been.17

Once all was/were forms were isolated, they were analysed using the mark- up scheme. This part of the process was the only one that needed to be done by hand. Then counts were made for the use of was and were for each person-number combination for the indicative and hypothetical contexts, in each of the 27 LCED texts. Compiled alongside this data were the corresponding results from the raw data of the SED (Orton et al., 1963-1971).

4. Results

One of the first things to be noted is that whereas the LCED does yield some

examples of second person forms of was/were, the SED questionnaire does not cover second person forms, so comparison is impossible. Therefore, second person forms are excluded from the evaluation that follows in cases where the focus is on comparison of the SED and LCED, but included when we consider the data from the LCED alone. This is not a serious difficulty, because the second person forms are few in number.

The evaluation of the data is given below. Firstly, we look in general at the degree to which the corpus data is similar or different to the questionnaire data.




Secondly, we look in more detail at the two hypotheses, and discuss whether the data supports them.

4.1. COMPARING THE CORPUS AND QUESTIONNAIRE DATA

Often, there was no data in the corpus texts to compare to some point of SED questionnaire data. For example, for location DO 1, the questionnaire data reports the first person plural indicative form as were. However, the LCED text DO1 does not contain any examples either of we was or we were. Comparison is therefore impossible. This happens for 88 person/number/mood combinations18 (PNMs) for which there is questionnaire data.

Furthermore, in many cases where there was corpus data, there were not enough instances of the form in question for any reliable judgement to be made. For example, in text SO1 there is one example of I was and one of I were, both in indicative contexts. This cannot, however, be taken to mean very much. No inference based on one or two instances could possibly be statistically significant. In fact, so much of the data consists of very low numbers of instances (usually less than 10 and often much lower) that it is impracticable even to apply properly rigorous tests of significance - we would be left with hardly any significant results at all.

As discussed above (3.1), however, even a single example in the corpus is at least as representative of the informant's usage as the response elicited by the questionnaire, and it is therefore valid to make comparisons, and draw what conclusions we can, on the basis of the data as it stands.

It should be noted that in the majority of cases, the LCED data gives us the same basic result as the SED: in 48 out of 64 single-form PNMs (75%), and in 20 out of 37 mixed-form PNMs (54%). In other words, the two datasets are in agreement in 68 out of the 101 cases where we have data from both sources (67%). However, the high proportion of cases (36%) based on a data paucity suggests that we would probably not be justified in putting too much faith in these proportions.

4.2. EVALUATION OF HYPOTHESIS 1

Hypothesis 1: in both the indicative and (should it be consistently marked) the subjunctive, the form used for the past tense of be will not be invariable in the speech of any given informant; thus the picture supplied by the SED data is not complete and the corpus data described below can be used to enrich it significantly.

To apply the data to this hypothesis, we examine the degree to which was and were appear for the same texts21 and person/number/mood combinations (PNMs). Three texts (CO6, BRK4 and DO3 - not geographically proximate) contain only examples of was.22 The other 24 texts contain examples of both was and were. In 16




Table III. Comparison of the SED questionnaire data and LCED data

Comparison of SED and LCED Frequency (Number of PNMs)19

Corpus contains examples only of a single form

(same form found in the SED data) 48

of which # PNMs are based on a data paucity20 22 (46%)

Corpus contains examples only of a single form

(other form found in the SED data) 16

of which # PNMs are based on a data paucity 9 (56%)

Total PNMS with only one form 64


Corpus contains examples of was and were for that

PNM, but examples of the form found in the SED data

are in the majority 20


Corpus contains examples of was and were for that

PNM, but examples of the form found in the SED data

are in the minority 7


Corpus contains an equal number of examples of was

and were 10


Total PNMS with more than one form 37


Grand Total 101

(of a possible 189 claims in the

questionnaire data)


cases, this is exactly what is reported by the questionnaire data. In the remaining 8 cases, was and were both appear although the questionnaire reports only one form. This provides some basic support for Hypothesis 1, since it demonstrates

very roughly the presence of considerable variation in the texts. Using the more precise measurement based on PNMs as described above, we

can look at the number of person/number/mood combinations in which both was




Table IV Variation across PNM

Type of PNM Number of PNMs Number of instances within those PNMs

Contains was only 54 286

(= 41%) (= 31%; mean = 5.3 instances per PNM)

Contains were only 31 87


Contains was only or 85 373

were only (subtotal) (= 65%) (= 41%; mean = 4.4 instances per PNM)

Contains was and were 46 543


Totals 131 916


and were are found, as opposed to the number where only was or only were are found. There are 12 potential PNMs in the data for every text (3 persons multiplied by two numbers multiplied by two moods). However for many of these there is no corpus data. In fact, in the whole set of 27 texts, there is data for 131 PNMs (out of a potential 324). For this measure, comparison with the SED is unnecessary; we can therefore take into account the second person forms, increasing the total set of PNMs by 30 from the number examined in 4.1 above. A yet more precise way to measure variation is to look at the number of instances occurring within the groups of PNMs. This data is given below.

It can thus be seen that a substantial proportion of the time (35%), speakers use both was and were for a given person/number/mood combination.23 This is enough in itself to demonstrate that variation is of crucial importance in this matter. However, the data in the third column supports Hypothesis 1 even more strongly. Even though PNMs that contain both was and were are themselves less likely, over half the instances of was/were occur in such mixed-form PNMs: the PNMs with only was or were have a much lower mean number of instances than the mixed-form PNMs. In short, any given instance is more likely than not24 to occur in a mixed-form PNM, even though such PNMs are less frequent than single-form PNMs.

This is notable because of the different natures of single-form and mixed-form PNMs. Within the data sample represented by any LCED text ("sampled" from the

"population" of utterances produced by the informant, which is after all what we are ultimately interested in), there is always a probability that a single-form PNM in the sample represents a mixed-form PNM in the population. This probability increases the fewer the number of instances in the single-form PNM in the sample.




For example, if we had a text (sample) where some informant produced 100 examples of indicative I was, we would consider it likely that another instance of the first person singular indicative drawn from the population would also be I was. For another sample with 1 such example of I was, we would not consider this anywhere near as likely even though in both cases 100% of that PNM consists of the form was. In this context, the low mean number of instances per single- form PNM in comparison to the overall mean per PNM suggests25 that many of the single-form PNMs in the sample are based either on a data paucity as defined in 4.1 above or on only a very few more examples, and have thus a considerable probability of representing a mixed-form PNM in the population.

Note that the converse does not apply to mixed-form PNMs. We can say with certainty that a mixed-form PNM in the sample represents a mixed-form PNM in the population. Even if, for example, the only example of were that the informant ever produces for a given PNM is the example in the sample, that is still a mixed-form population PNM. A mixed-form PNM in the sample indicates beyond question a PNM in the population where the usage of was and were is variable and must be quantified.26

It can therefore be posited with some confidence that the data as it stands is indicative of variation in usage by the SED informants to a large and significant degree. Therefore, as stated by Hypothesis 1, it is not only valid but necessary for our picture of the informants' usage not only to be informed by the SED but also to be enriched by the LCED. In the following section, we perform such an enrichment in seeking to address our second hypothesis.

4.3. EVALUATION OF HYPOTHESIS 2

Hypothesis 2: there is, in English rural dialects, no were-subjunctive that is consistently marked with a form different to the past indicative of be.

It is with respect to this "null" hypothesis that the problem of paucity of data is at its most acute. There are only 30 instances of the past tense of be in a hypothetical context in the part of the LCED studied. Of 27 texts, 15 contains no such instances. Only 5 contain more than two such instances. Here is confirmation, if any were needed, of how rare the were-subjunctive would be, even if it occurred in every one of these hypothetical contexts - given that the grand total of instances in the texts studied is 916. It is not possible to say whether or not these speakers consistently mark the subjunctive based on the data available; our null hypothesis cannot be disproved.

However, this does not mean that it is impossible to infer anything at all. The maps given in section 1.3, based on a very simplistic reading of the SED data, show the existence of a were-subjunctive; we can at least see if our own data, incon- clusive as it is, fits with such a picture. In fact, there are in our data instances which fit with what the maps suggest, and instances which do not. All are listed below.27




Table V Examples and counter examples

Examples found in ... ... texts and person/number ... texts and person/number combinations for which combinations for which

questionnaire data reports a questionnaire data reports the

different subjunctive and same subjunctive and indicative

indicative

Supporting examples W3 (1), W7 (1). CU1 (1), S012 (1), S013 (1), W3 (1), BRK2 (1), DO1 (1), D02 (1), D04 (2).

Counter examples W2A (1), BRK2 (4).28 BRK2 (1), DO1 (1).

Only examples from hypothetical contexts where comparable questionnaire data exists are listed (the number of instances follows the text code in brackets):

As can be seen, the majority of these examples (14 out of 18) either support SED

questionnaire findings that report no subjunctive, or do not support questionnaire findings which do report one. Very few suggest a subjunctive where the questionnaire does not, or support a subjunctive that one might infer on the basis of the

questionnaire data alone. Therefore, this data, though insufficient, casts doubt on the were-subjunctive's existence, and thus provides evidence (albeit very weak) in favour of Hypothesis 2.

The four texts (NB 1, CUl, C05 and C06) examined as a control group do not seem on the available evidence to behave differently to the other texts in this matter. There are a mere two examples of was/were in hypothetical contexts in these four texts. However, one of these supports the questionnaire in not reporting a distinct subjunctive at that locality (CU1). The other instance, found at C05, is for the third person plural form, and thus there is no comparable questionnaire data, but the form, were, is the same as the form used in C05 for the third person plural indicative. Unfortunately the data paucity here means that we cannot really use these texts as a control against the other texts when looking for evidence of a were-subjunctive.

5. Conclusion

We hope to have shown that, despite its paucity, the data produced by the methodology utilised in this study can be used firstly to demonstrate the utility of enriching the SED data with data from the LCED, and secondly to perform such an enrichment.




5.1. WHAT CAN WE CONCLUDE ON THE BASIS OF THIS STUDY?

While we cannot conclude from this study that English traditional rural dialects lack a were-subjunctive, we can conclude that the principal source of data suggesting they have one, the SED questionnaire, does not on its own provide a full picture. The question of the were-subjunctive in English traditional rural dialects remains open. We cannot answer it either on the basis of the SED or the LCED, but we hope to have demonstrated that the two used together can provide a better picture than we possessed at the start. Earlier, the possibility was raised (1.3 above) that the disappearance of the were-subjunctive might have spread to SE from dialects such as those studied. But since the main issue of the were- subjunctive's existence in these dialects is unresolved, this possibility too cannot be confirmed or ruled out.

As Trudgill (1983) notes, the questionnaire methodology cannot capture the quantitative details of variation within an individual's usage, if they are not entirely consistent in their use of a particular feature. However, as we have shown, a corpus- based methodology can capture exactly these details, given a sufficient amount of data. The two methodologies are in a sense complementary.29 Thus, we believe the case for the usefulness of the "enrichment" approach taken in this paper to be proven.

This is nicely demonstrated by the data for the locality W4 - a remarkable set of results not hitherto commented on. The informant here seems to have pointed out that both was and were are acceptable to them as indicatives with I, we and she, since both forms are listed in the questionnaire data. And indeed, in the corpus both was and were are found in the relevant PNMs. However, the questionnaire does not tell us that while I were is much more common than I was (4 I was as opposed to 14 I were), the she was/she were distribution is much more even (18 and 13 instances, respectively).30 Similarly, the corpus does not tell us that the informant was intuitively aware that both forms were acceptable in their idiolect.31

In summary, it is not a question of one mode of enquiry producing the "right" result and the other the "wrong" result. To be sure, the results are different, but that is only to be expected given the methodological differences. The "right" or "wrong" lies in the purpose to which the data is applied.

5.2. POSSIBLE FUTURE ROUTES OF ENQUIRY AND FINAL REMARKS

While we hope that the results presented here are in themselves valuable, it cannot be doubted that this study raises at least as many questions as it answers.

Most obviously, what about the rest of England? To extend this study beyond the corner of south-west England studied here would be very time-consuming, but useful; firstly, to test whether, as has been assumed, the methodological conclusions drawn here are applicable to the whole country; secondly, to see whether data from other locales might be plentiful enough to prove or disprove our "null" hypothesis and draw some less tentative conclusions.




Let us, for the moment, assume that the null hypothesis of no consistently- marked subjunctive would be shown to be correct by such an extended study: if the indicative/subjunctive distinction is not driving was/were variation, what is? Ihalainen (1988) has suggested on the basis of work with texts of English dialect speech that was/were variation is driven by sentence position, i.e. a finally positioned instance of past-tense be has a different form to an initial or medi- ally positioned instance. Some other potentially relevant grammatical factors were listed in 3.5 above. It would be productive to attempt to determine whether or not one of these factors drives was/were variation in the LCED texts. This could be done by examining one or more texts with no consistently marked subjunctive32 but to contain many examples of was/were for the same PNM. This might give us some idea of what grammatical factors to look for in other texts. It is of course possible that no grammatical factor will be found that drives variation: was and were may in some cases simply be free or socially-conditioned variant forms of the indicative. In the latter case, we could never pinpoint this as we only have evidence of the informant's speech in one social context, i.e. interview with a fieldworker.

We have, in the course of this investigation, been careful to point out potential flaws in our work, and have highlighted ways that the results might not be fully rigorous. However, on the whole, we consider that this investigation has broadly fulfilled its aims. One of the strengths of this study is that it provides, in its mark- up scheme and general method, a framework of procedures to see to what degree a were-subjunctive exists in the speech of any person for whom a large number of utterances have been recorded and transcribed. But more crucially, the study has allowed us to marry two important methods in linguistics. It is through such methodological cross-fertilisation that new advances and insights may often be made.

Notes

* We would like to acknowledge the comments made by several reviewers which led to the inclusion of a number of useful revisions in this paper. 1 Also referred to as the subjunctive mood. 2 To describe the subjunctive as having tenses is perhaps misleading; as with modal verbs (e.g. will/would), the "tenses" have different meanings and uses, having little to do with time. However, it is a convenient way to label two forms. 3 The distinction between optative and formulaic is not made altogether clear. 4 For example Wright (1905), the data for which was collected late in the nineteenth century. 5 The source data used was the Helsinki Corpus of English Texts (see Ihalainen et al., 1987). 6 We follow the usage of Cheshire et al. (1993) in using grammar throughout this paper as a covering term for syntax and/or (inflectional) morphology. 7 This was perhaps unavoidable, since this latter survey was a questionnaire given to schoolchildren, who might have had trouble getting to grips with the concept. 8 Trudgill (1983) gives some criticisms of the over-simplification that can result from reliance on isoglosses alone.




9 A "consistently marked" form is defined for the purpose of these hypotheses as one that is marked a high percentage of the time, but not necessarily all of the time. 10 Whether its form be was or were, I maintain the terminology were-subjunctive for the past tense

subjunctive of the verb be. 11 This corpus, edited by Juhani Klemola, is also referred as the Spoken Corpus of the

Survey of English Dialects. Some basic details of the LCED are available on the internet at

http://www.eng.helsinki.fi/leeds_corpus.htm. It is published as Klemola et al. (1999). See also Klemola and Jones (1999). 12 The 28 texts used in this study have a mean length of about 2,300 words. The longest text is 4,821words and the shortest is 818 words. 13 We do not mean here to suggest that the existence of the subjunctive, and the forms it takes, can be inferred for one local dialect on the basis of results relating to another. Rather, it is the implications for methodological issues which we expect to carry over to the study of the were-subjunctive in other areas of the country. 14 In the interests of compatibility with the SED data, here and throughout the system of county names used is that from before the 1974 boundary changes. 15 It is taken for granted that the person/number of any objects or complements are irrelevant; it is conceivable that they might have an effect, as they do in some languages, but extremely unlikely in the context of English grammar. 16 For this 'test run' of the mark-up scheme, data drawn from the BNC was used. 17 In the transcription of the LCED texts, non-standard forms (e.g. he been) have been enclosed in brackets and replaced in the body of the text by the corresponding standard form (e.g. he was

). 18 Assuming, for current purposes, that the hypothetical context really does motivate the use of a different mood to the indicative. 19 No percentages are given because the total number of PNMs is 101; therefore, the count of PNMs is virtually equal to the percentage. 20 A PNM is defined as being based on a data paucity if its classification depends on: less than three examples of was AND less than three examples of were AND less than four examples altogether. 21 In this part of the analysis, the control texts are included with all the others, since for purposes of

Hypothesis 1 it is not important that they originate from localities in different parts of the country. 22 Examples produced by the fieldworker are ignored here and throughout this discussion of the results. 23 Note that the counts of mixed and single-form PNMs were done assuming a separate indicative and subjunctive. If there is no consistently marked were-subjunctive in these varieties of English, then that would probably increase the number of mixed-form PNMs (as the PNMs for subjunctive and indicative would be conflated together) and this proportion might be considerably greater. 24 It is outside the scope of this study to attempt to quantify with any degree of precision the

probabilities discussed in this section. 25 The high proportion of single-form PNMs based on a data paucity, as shown in Table III, also

supports this argument. 26 Of course, in this hypothetical case the quantifiable proportion in question would be very close to 100%. 27 Only the listed 18 of the 30 instances concern the third person singular or first person plural forms. 28 BRK2 is problematic. The questionnaire data asserts that the first person plural form is

(subjunctive) we were and (indicative) we was, while giving we were as an "older" form of the indicative. We decided to treat this as a report of a distinct subjunctive; a good case could be made for not doing so. 29 Since our expertise is in the corpus methodology, we have not in this paper concentrated on what a questionnaire methodology could tell us that the corpus-based methodology could not. But that such




details exist - and are of interest - is not to be doubted. For example, no corpus, however large, can tell you anything about a speaker's intuitions concerning their own usage; a questionnaire captures exactly that. See also the following discussion of data from the locality W4. 30 Luckily in this case there are a large number of instances of was/were - 18 for the first person singular and 31 for the third person singular - on which to base this statement. 31 The vast majority of the SED data consists of single items. For more than one item to be listed suggests that the informant specifically gave both forms as acceptable. 32 It might well, however, prove difficult to identify any such texts.

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Article Contentsp. 205p. 206p. 207p. 208p. 209p. 210p. 211p. 212p. 213p. 214p. 215p. 216p. 217p. 218p. 219p. 220p. 221p. 222p. 223p. 224p. 225p. 226p. 227p. 228

Issue Table of ContentsComputers and the Humanities, Vol. 37, No. 2 (May, 2003), pp. 149-242Front MatterThe ACH Page: The Value of Mentoring: Young Scholars in IT and the Humanities [pp. 149-150]Another Perspective on Vocabulary Richness [pp. 151-178]Vocabulary in Interviews as Related to Respondent Characteristics [pp. 179-204]The Were-Subjunctive in British Rural Dialects: Marrying Corpus and Questionnaire Data [pp. 205-228]Notes and DiscussionLocating the Eureka Stockade: Use of a Geographical Information System (GIS) in a Historiographical Research Context [pp. 229-234]Chronological Distribution of Information in Historical Texts [pp. 235-240]

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the were-subjunctive in british rural dialects marrying corpus and questionnaire data

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light of data

british rural dialects

rural dialects of england

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