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Dialect Syntax: a Neglected Resource for Welsh

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Dialect Syntax: a Neglected Resource for Welsh DIALECT SYNTAX: A NEGLECTED RESOURCE FOR WELSH G.M.AWBERY Department of Cultural Life Welsh Folk Museum St. Fagan's CardijfCF5 IGF, Wales I. INTRODUCTION Traditional regional dialect is a resource that has until now been sadly ne­ glected by those working in the field of Welsh syntax. Most serious work has focused on the standard literary language, admittedly the most thoroughly docu­ mented and accessible form of Welsh. There have also been attempts to discuss what is referred to rather loosely as "informal usage" or "spoken Welsh," in recognition of the fact that there is a wide divergence between different registers of the language. Syntactic analysis of data from a clearly defined regional dialect is, however, very rare. 1 This is a pity, as the dialects are characterized by a wealth of syntactic varia­ tion, paralleling that which exists on other linguistic levels. The problem is that awareness of this variation has tended to remain at an anecdotal stage, and the detailed information that is needed as a basis for systematic analysis is simply not available. Dialectologists have preferred to concentrate on the more manageable fields of phonology, lexis, and morphology and have tended to avoid the whole question of dialect syntax. This bias derives most probably from the fact that any account of the syntactic patterns of a dialect will require an extensive corpus of natural speech as a source. In the past, before sound recording techniques became readily available, Syntm and Semantics, Volume 23 Copyright (01990 by Academic Press. Inc. The Svntat of the Modern Celtic Lwiguuge., All right:-. of reproduction in any form reserved. 2 G. M. Awbery it was clearly out of the question for the fieldworker to transcribe whole conver­ sations on the spot. By now the routine use of tape recording in fieldwork means that it is possible in principle to prepare the necessary transcripts. It remains, however, a laborious and time-consuming obstacle, and syntax is still a relatively unexplored area of Welsh dialectology. In this article I attempt to show that the dialect syntax of Welsh is a field that well repays the initial effort required in making available the raw data. I examine the negation of simple sentences in the traditional Welsh dialect of north Pem­ brokeshire, a district in southwest Wales. Certain types of negatives have be­ come a stereotype in this area, but little attention has been paid to the workings of the system overall.~ I shall be using as source material transcripts of tape recordings stored in the sound archives of the Welsh Folk Museum. These consist of relatively informal interviews on a wide variety of topics: traditional farming methods, traditional dairying and cookery, children's games, and stories about well-known local char­ acters. The informants were not being questioned directly about their speech, and the focus of attention was on the topics discussed rather than on the dialect. These transcripts provide a reasonably natural corpus of dialect speech and allow for a preliminary account of syntactic variation. The broad outlines of sentence structure are similar in Pembrokeshire Welsh and in the standard language. Basic word order in the sentence is YSO. The verb agrees with a pronominal subject in number and person but always retains the third singular form before a noun subject. The first lexical item in the direct ob­ ject is subject to initial soft mutation. Most prepositions agree in number, person, and (in the third-person singular) gender with a following pronoun. Complex tense-aspect combinations are formed with the verb bod 'be'. followed by an aspect marker and an uninflected verb, whose direct object is not subject to soft mutation. Such common ground will be taken for granted in the discussion to follow and will form a basis for the detailed account of negation.' 2. NEGATION OF LEXICAL VERBS In this article I look first at the negation of full lexical verbs in Pembrokeshire Welsh. I describe the syntactic patterns found and discuss how these facts may best be accounted for. Negation of the verb bod 'be' will be left until after the general picture has been established, as it displays certain peculiarities not found in other forms. 2.1. Initial Mutation of the Verb In standard literary Welsh negation is marked by a sentence-initial negative particle: nid before a verb with an initial vowel and ni before a verb with an .
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