Re: YAEDT? Syntax in dialects of English (was: Of accents & dialects (was: Azurian phonology)

2008/10/25 Elliott Lash <erelion12@...>:
> 'He's a good man is Tony Blair.'
[...]
> 'It's a cold country is Iceland' or 'That's a good beer is Becks'
[...]
> 'I am/was sat in the pub drinking a beer'
Speaking as a native British English speaker, I would definitely say
all these examples, and they're much more widespread than just
Lincolnshire, but I would write all these examples with an extra comma
in. They seem to be separate-ish clauses to me. The last example, with
this punctuation added, becomes the much more standard-looking "I was
sat in the pub, drinking a beer".

The other form has something interesting going on. Punctuated, it is
"He's a good man, is Tony Blair". You also hear "He's a good man, Tony
Blair is" though this version has less emphasis on 'Tony Blair'. This
usage seems to be limited to 'can', 'should', 'could', 'would', 'has',
'will', 'be' and 'do', eg it's "He plays down the right wing, Jack
does" as opposed to *"He plays down the right wing, Jack plays" which
sounds ungrammatical. There's also "She'll go to the shops, she will",
"He's scored three goals, he has", and "He can play up front, he can".
I can't think of any examples where the verb in the second clause
isn't one of those.

*"He can play up front, can he" sounds like a question, but "He can
play up front, can Jack" sounds like a statement. The same applies to
the other examples: when the subject of the second clause is a
pronoun, they can only be factual statements if the subject and verb
aren't inverted.

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