Date: Sun, 9 Apr 1995 18:28:12 EDT

From: flanigan[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]OUVAXA.CATS.OHIOU.EDU

Subject: needs+past participle



Ohio University Electronic Communication





Date: 09-Apr-1995 06:27pm EST



To: Remote Addressee ( _mx%"ads-l[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uga.cc.uga.edu" )



From: Beverly Flanigan Dept: Linguistics

FLANIGAN Tel No:



Subject: needs+past participle





My surveys on the use of "needs + past participle" (as in "needs

washed") narrow the distribution more than Preston's, Murray's, et al.

I've collected data over the past five years or more, using Trudgill's

questionnaire (in an article reprinted in _On Dialect_, NYU Press,

1983), and I get native speaker use of this form _only_ from South

Midland speakers. Ohio cuts nicely into three regions: Northern

(Cleveland), North Midland (Columbus), and South Midland (Cincinnati to

Athens), giving me students from all over the state and outside. No

one from Columbus northward (including Akron) has ever reported using

"needs+past part.", although some have heard it, principally down here

in the foothills of Appalachia (/AEp[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]lAEtch[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]/ to the natives, by the

way). If they haven't heard it, they call it "foreign"; if they have,

they ridicule it as "hillbilly." Native users, by the way, often

report that they had never heard any alternate form before going away

to college or moving away; contra Murray, I've never had a student

pretend not to know it while actually using it (perhaps because of the

privacy of a written questionnaire, but we openly discuss the forms

afterwards too). The same goes for "positive anymore"--again, no

denials, but this gets a bit wider distribution, including Akron

(perhaps from in-migrants?) but not Columbus. I don't recall hearing

it in Bloomington, Indiana, though; perhaps the spread from Penn. and

Appalachia doesn't extend that far, just as "needs+past part." doesn't

reach to Louisville? Most importantly, I don't see either of these

forms as North Midland, at least not in my (many) Columbus-area

informants.

Beverly Flanigan

Ohio University







Received: 09-Apr-1995 06:28pm