9. The historical geographical distribution of periphrastic do in southern dialects

Abstract

The use of unstressed periphrastic do in affirmative declarative sentences is fairly well-documented already in nineteenth century descriptions of south-western dialects. However, it is not possible to determine the geographical distribution of this feature in any detail on the basis of these descriptions. And, somewhat surprisingly, even the more recent discussions of south-western dialects offer conflicting descriptions of the geographical distribution of do-periphrasis. It is sometimes claimed (see Wakelin 1977, 1983, 1984a) that the use of periphrastic do is a very isolated feature in some south-western localities, possibly a remnant of a single, larger area. But others (cf. Rogers 1979) have argued that the use of do-periphrasis is more widespread in the South-West of England. My aim in this chapter is to determine the geographical distribution of periphrastic do in English dialects. The discussion is based both on the published SED material and on the unpublished incidental material found in the SED fieldworker notebooks, which provides a rich, but surprisingly little-used, corpus of dialectal verb syntax.1