Need + Prepositional Adverb in the Midland

Abstract

The status of the U.S. Midland as a separate dialect area has been a topic of discussion for quite some time, and Murray and Simon (2006b) strive for resolution by defining the Midland as a dialect area characterized by a core set of seventeen morpho-syntactic features that co-occur in the region but are not necessarily used by all or only Midlanders. In this article, the author argues that need + prepositional adverb (e.g., The dog needs out) belongs among the features of the Midland and presents data to show that this construction parallels the regional, social, and stylistic distributions of other Midland constructions. In addition, the author proposes that need + prepositional adverb has indirect links to Scotch-Irish English and is likely a U.S. or, at the very least, a recent innovation that arose by analogy to other Scotch-Irish features. Finally, need + prepositional adverb is a modern Midland feature that provides evidence against the Midland as simply a transition zone.

needs+PAST PARTICIPLE in regional Englishes on Twitter

“…Production data of needs +PAST on Twitter in this study strongly confirm the conclusions of those researchers, and more broadly validate the methodologies they employed to study needs +PAST. While previous work has defended the practice of studying low‐frequency linguistic features via elicitation of conscious judgments from informants on pragmatic grounds (Murray & Simon, ; Murray et al., ) or on the basis of reliability within instruments (Benson, , ) and between instruments (Bailey et al., ; Chambers, ), the production data in this study validate those methods as having provided a basically accurate description of needs +PAST in actual language behavior. While Doyle () used Labov et al.…”

“…Benson (, p. 48; , p. 232) challenges that concerns over the validity of informant judgments are ‘largely anecdotal.’ She defends the use of acceptability judgments for studying low‐frequency features on the basis of consistency of responses within her own survey data (Benson, , p. 49), and points to Youmans () and Bailey, Wikle, and Tillery () as part of ‘a growing body of evidence [that] attests to the reliability of the data and the validity of the conclusions based on acceptability judgments of morpho‐syntactic features’ (Benson, , p. 49). Chambers () also shows that responses to questions in a fieldworker‐administered survey are highly similar to responses to a survey conducted by mail.…”