Re: Mormons in Brithenig/Aelyan North America

On Mon, 12 Apr 100, John Cowan wrote:

> dirk elzinga scripsit:
>
> > This large British substratum gave rise to particular features
> > of Utah English which are not shared by other USians.
>
> Do you have details of this handy?  Sounds fascinating.
The two I can think of off hand are:

1) creaky voice
2) pro-predicate 'do'

They are both found primarily now among older rural speakers in
northern and central Utah. I don't know a lot about the creaky
voice except that it found only among men, but the pro-predicate
'do' construction is more familiar to me, as I engage in it
myself.

In standard American English, it is common for an auxiliary to
refer back to an entire verb phrase, or to have a construction
such as 'do so':

        I send Express Mail to foreign contries and have for
        several years.

        I send Express Mail to foreign contries and have done so
        for several years.

In Utah English this becomes:

        I send Express Mail to foreign contries and have *done*
        for several years.

With 'do' but without 'so'. Most speakers of Standard American
English find this to be odd at best.

Other examples include:

        I don't know if Martha saw it. She may have *done*.

        How will the Clinton people deal with this, or can they
        *do*?

        DW: We should get those phones ringing.
        BL: We should *do*, Doug.

        LE: You could turn right here.
        DE: Yeah, I could *do*.

The dating of this syntactic feature is interesting. It was not
in common use in British English before the colonization of the
New World, else it would have been a part of American English.
It apparently was in common use by 1838, the date of the first
missionary work in Great Britain, since the new converts who
emigrated to the US carried it with them. Presently, it serves
as a marker for those who participate in Mormon culture (broadly
construed) by either being active in the LDS Church or one of
its splinter groups (the Fundamentalists), or having an LDS
family background. I suppose I get it from my dad, whose
maternal grandmother was born in Utah to a British parents

There are no doubt other British features in Utah English, but
I'm not aware of them; these are the most salient to outsiders.

Dirk

--
Dirk Elzinga
dirk.elzinga@m.cc.utah.edu