“Vernacular universals” in nineteenth-century grammar writing

Abstract

This article investigates nineteenth-century prescriptive grammar writing for comments on four purported “vernacular universals”: multiple negation, adverbs without -ly, you was, and existential there is/there was with plural subjects. These features were already going out of (written) language use, but were actively stigmatized as faulty, uneducated or socially undesirable by prescriptive grammar writers. However, there are national and individual differences in salience and the degree of stigmatization that still affect the status of these non-standard features today.