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