Re: USAGE: Weird dialectal stuff

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Constructed Languages List [mailto:CONLANG@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDU]On
> Behalf Of Christophe Grandsire
> Sent: Monday, January 10, 2000 9:41 AM
> To: CONLANG@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDU
> Subject: Re: Weird dialectal stuff
>         It makes me think of a strange feature of my spoken
> English (second
> language of course). I happen to use constructions like "I didn't made"
> instead of "I didn't make", that's to say I repeat the past on the
> auxiliary and the main verb. I use that nearly only with my boyfriend (who
> makes the same mistake by the way). My question is: does such a feature
> happen in a dialect of English, somewhere in the world, or not at all? It
> happened to me so naturally that I would be surprised if it didn't appear
> anywhere in the world with first-language English speakers.
Christophe, the only example I can think of like this is with the phrase
"used to." A lot of people treat that phrase as inconjugable (is that a
word? :) ), thus to negate it they said "didn't used to" -- used the past
tense "didn't" as well as the past tense "used." But then again, it's very
hard to distinguish between "didn't used to" and "didn't USE to," which I
would assume to be the correct form. The only real way to tell is if they're
speaking very carefully or slowly.


Eric Christopherson
raccoon@elknet.net