Re: What is this construction

Tristan McLeay wrote:

> On Tue, 2005-09-20 at 10:02 +0100, Peter Bleackley wrote:
> > Staving Shreyas Sampat:
> > >Peter Bleackley wrote:
> > >
> > >>He liked languages, did Tolkien.
> > >>
> > >>It may be a particularly Northern English form. Does anyone know what
> > >>such a construction is called?
> > >
> > >I've never seen this form, except as "did <pronoun>?" as a tag
> > >question.
> > >Do you have some specific example that you were thinking of? Your
> > >(apparently) made-up one doesn't look grammatical, to me.
> >
> >  From this and various other responses, it's clear that this particular
> > form is dialectal and peculiar to northern England, as I had previously
> > surmised. The question tagging thing that Shreyas mentions is something
> > totally different.
>
> I'd like to point that I'm quite familiar with this sort of usage,
> though I'm unlikely to produce it.
I've heard or read it, but rarely, and wouldn't produce it either.

 It sounds quaint and old-fashioned
> and english, all of which are synonyms. (I'm Australian, fwiw.)
>
Yes. To me, it smacks of folk tales/songs. Of course, "Northern English" or
Irish could easily >>> Appalachian/Southern American Engl.

"Old King Cole was a merry old soul, a merry old soul was he."