Comments on Roberta G. Abraham's "Patterns in the Use of the Present Tense Third Person Singular -s by University-Level ESL Speakers". Two Readers React

1985 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 171
Author(s):  
Peggy Rodriguez ◽  
Robin Sabino
Keyword(s):  
Third Person ◽  
University Level ◽  
Present Tense

scholarly journals Morphological Spelling

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 31-45
Author(s):  
Hanna Rutkowska
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Present Tense ◽  
William Caxton ◽  
English Spelling ◽  
Printing House

This study aims at contributing to the discussion on the role of the early printers in the regularisation and standardisation of the English spelling. It assesses the degree of early printers’ (in)consistency concerning morphological spelling, in particular the spelling of third person singular present tense (indicative) inflectional endings of verbs in six editions of The book of good maners (1487–1526), printed by William Caxton, Richard Pynson and Wynkyn de Worde. The analysis suggests that early printers could have been interested in regularising spelling already before normative guidance from scholars became available in the form of grammars and spelling books, that is before the middle of the sixteenth century. However, the levels of the printers’ spelling consistency varied, depending on the particular printing house and edition.

Third-person singular zero in the Norfolk dialect A re-assessment

2014 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Joby
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Present Evidence ◽  
French Speaking ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Present Tense

AbstractI use the results of my own research into the language use of the immigrant (or ‘Stranger’) communities in early modern Norwich to evaluate Peter Trudgill’s thesis that it was language contact in Norwich between the Strangers and the local English inhabitants that led to the emergence of third-person singular present tense zero (he go rather than he goes). I present evidence that third-person singular zero was already in use in Norwich and elsewhere in Norfolk by the time when Dutch- and French-speaking immigrants arrived in Norwich. The question then arises as to whether language contact did in fact play any role in establishing zero-marking as the norm in the Norfolk dialect, a process which was complete by about 1700. I argue is that if language contact did play a role in the success of zeromarking, it would have been in a manner different to that described by Trudgill.

“La marquise sortit à cinq heures”

PMLA ◽  
1969 ◽  
Vol 84 (6) ◽  
pp. 1644-1648
Author(s):  
Albert Chesneau
Keyword(s):  
Structural Analysis ◽  
The Other ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
First Person ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Present Tense ◽  
Nouveau Roman ◽  
The Ideal

Simple structural analysis applied to passages cited from the works of André Breton elucidates the reasons for his condemnation of the statement La marquise sortit à cinq heures (see his Manifeste du surréalisme, 1924) as non-poetic. This study demonstrates the opposition existing between the above-mentioned realist sentence, essentially non-subjective (third-person subject), non-actual (past tense predicate), contextual (context can be supposed), and prosaic (lack of imagery), and on the other hand a theoretic surrealist sentence, essentially subjective (first-person subject), actual (present tense predicate), and non-contextual, producing a shock-image. In reality, Breton's surrealistic phrase does not always contain all of these qualities at once. However, in contrast to the condemned phrase which contains none at all, it does always manifest at least one of these characteristics, the most important having reference to the evocative power of the shock-image. A final comparison with a sentence quoted from Robbe-Grillet, the theoretician of the “nouveau roman”, proves that even though it may appear objective, the surrealist phrase is really not so. In conclusion, the four characteristics of the ideal surrealist sentence—subjectivity, actuality, non-contextuality, and ability to produce shock-images—create a poetics of discontinuity opposed to the classical art of narration as found traditionally in the novel. (In French)

scholarly journals Students Ability in Producing the Sentences of Simple Present Tense at STMIK Musi Rawas

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 154-167
Author(s):  
Herlina Herlina ◽  
Maria Ramasari
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Study ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Subject Pronoun ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Present Tense

This research aimed to find out the students  ability in producing the sentences of simple present tense at STMIK Musi Rawas. The research was a qualitative study. As stated in findings, it interpreted that there were 34 students (62.91 percent) in the low category. Thus, there were 15 students (27.50 percent) in the good category. Finally, there were 5 students (9.59 percent) in the excellent category. Hence, it can be concluded that students ability in producing the sentences of simple present tense was still low. It showed that many students still got difficulties in producing the sentences of simple present tense especially for verb in third person singular as the subject pronoun. Keywords: students ability, simple present tense, sentences

East Anglian English in the English Dialects App

English Today ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 14-30
Author(s):  
David Britain ◽  
Tamsin Blaxter ◽  
Adrian Leemann
Keyword(s):  
Innovation Diffusion ◽  
The State ◽  
The South ◽  
Subsequent Work ◽  
East Anglia ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Steep Decline ◽  
Present Tense ◽  
British Variety

East Anglian English was the first British variety of English to be subject to dialectological scrutiny using sociolinguistic techniques (Trudgill, 1974, and his subsequent work) and since then has been subject to only sporadic investigation (e.g. Britain, 1991, 2014a, 2014b, 2015; Kingston, 2000; Straw, 2006; Amos, 2011; Potter, 2012, 2018; Butcher, 2015). Recent research has suggested that, in those few locations that have been investigated, East Anglian English is gradually losing some of its traditional dialect features, in favour of forms from the South East more generally. Kingston (2000), Britain (2014a) and Potter (2018) all found, for example, a rather steep decline in the use of East Anglia's traditional third-person present-tense zero. Furthermore, we are aware of the arrival into East Anglia of linguistic innovations from the South East of England, such as TH fronting (Trudgill, 1988; Britain, 2005; Potter, 2012) and /l/ vocalisation (Johnson & Britain, 2007; Potter, 2014), but we only know about their success in a few parts of the region – Norwich, East Suffolk and the Fens. Since Trudgill's investigations across East Anglia in the 1970s, however (e.g. Trudgill & Foxcroft, 1978), and despite a few multilocality studies (Britain, 1991, 2014a; Potter, 2018) no research has been able to provide a picture of the state of the traditional dialect across the whole region. We have therefore only a patchy understanding of the extent to which traditional dialect obsolescence, dialect levelling and innovation diffusion have impacted the dialect landscape of this region as a whole.

Morphological factors in the grammaticalization of the Catalan “go” past

Diachronica ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 313-339 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew L. Juge
Keyword(s):  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
First Person ◽  
Person Plural ◽  
Present Account ◽  
Semantic Development ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Present Tense ◽  
First Person Plural

The Catalan periphrastic perfective past is a so-called “go” past: Vaig cantar, lit. “I-go to-sing”, “I sang” vs. Vaig allà, lit. “I-go there”, “I go there”. Its semantic development has been much discussed, but it presents morphological issues as well. Previous analyses ignore key morphological factors, especially the shift from the early mix of preterit and present auxiliary forms to exclusive use of the present and the development of several variant auxiliary forms. The auxiliary-plus-infinitive construction shares some but not all forms with the lexical verb anar “to go”. Early examples use mostly preterit auxiliary forms but later the small number of present forms grows and the preterit forms disappear. I argue that the present-preterit syncretism in the first person plural of anar, anam, allowed for reinterpretation of the construction as one with a present tense auxiliary rather than a preterit auxiliary. This analysis runs counter to the typical ‘narrative present’ account. Subsequently, the unique third person singular va allowed for new auxiliary forms influenced by the synthetic preterit. This case shows the importance for typological study of detailed analysis of this type to counterbalance the risk of superficial analysis inherent in crosslinguistic studies.

Third-person singular zero in Norfolk English: An addendum

2016 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Joby
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
East Anglia ◽  
The Third ◽  
French Speaking ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Present Tense ◽  
The Third Person

Abstract An article published in 2014 argued that the third-person singular present tense indicative zero was already present in Norfolk English before the arrival of Dutch- and French-speaking immigrants in Norwich in the middle of the sixteenth century. This position differs from that of Trudgill, who has argued that zero-marking in Norfolk English arose as a result of language contact between the immigrants (or ‘Strangers’) and local English people. One response to the earlier article is that it relies on examples involving the verb have, and that this verb is something of an exception as it is found with zero-marking in other varieties of English. The present article addresses that concern by providing further evidence that zero-marking was already used in Norfolk English for verbs other than have before the arrival of the Strangers in Norwich. It then evaluates whether, although zero-marking was present prior to 1565, Trudgill’s language contact thesis may nevertheless help to explain how zero-marking became a common feature of Norfolk English and indeed of varieties of English elsewhere in East Anglia. In short, this article aims to shed further light on the interesting question of how and when zero-marking developed in Norfolk English.

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