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“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.

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.

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Acknowledgements vii
  4. The future of historical sociolinguistics? 1
  5. Part I. Methodological innovations
  6. Exploring part-of-speech frequencies in a sociohistorical corpus of English 23
  7. Reading into the past 53
  8. Ireland in British parliamentary debates 1803–2005 83
  9. Discord in eighteenth-century genteel correspondence 109
  10. Part II. New data for historical sociolinguistic research
  11. Competing norms and standards 131
  12. Relativisation in Dutch diaries, private letters and newspapers (1770–1840) 157
  13. “A graphic system which leads its own linguistic life”? 187
  14. Part III. Theory: Bridging gaps, new challenges
  15. Historical sociolinguistics and construction grammar 217
  16. A lost Canadian dialect 239
  17. “Vernacular universals” in nineteenth-century grammar writing 275
  18. Revisiting weak ties 303
  19. Index 327
Exploring Future Paths for Historical Sociolinguistics
This chapter is in the book Exploring Future Paths for Historical Sociolinguistics
https://doi.org/10.1075/ahs.7.11and

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Acknowledgements vii
  4. The future of historical sociolinguistics? 1
  5. Part I. Methodological innovations
  6. Exploring part-of-speech frequencies in a sociohistorical corpus of English 23
  7. Reading into the past 53
  8. Ireland in British parliamentary debates 1803–2005 83
  9. Discord in eighteenth-century genteel correspondence 109
  10. Part II. New data for historical sociolinguistic research
  11. Competing norms and standards 131
  12. Relativisation in Dutch diaries, private letters and newspapers (1770–1840) 157
  13. “A graphic system which leads its own linguistic life”? 187
  14. Part III. Theory: Bridging gaps, new challenges
  15. Historical sociolinguistics and construction grammar 217
  16. A lost Canadian dialect 239
  17. “Vernacular universals” in nineteenth-century grammar writing 275
  18. Revisiting weak ties 303
  19. Index 327
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