DOCUMENT RESUME ED 395 506 FL 023 850 AUTHOR Odlin, Terence TITLE "Sorrow Penny Yee Payed for My Drink": Taboo, Euphemism, and a Phantom Substrate. CLCS Occasional Paper No. 43. INSTITUTION Trinity Coll., Dublin (Ireland). Centre for Language and Communication Studies. REPORT NO ISSN-0332-3889 PUB DATE 96 NOTE 28p.; An abbreviated version of this paper was given as a public lecture in the Centre for Language and Communication Studies (Dublin, Ireland, 1996). PUB TYPE Collected Works Serials (022) Reports Descriptive (141) EDRS PRICE MF01/PCO2 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS Diachronic Linguistics; *English; English Literature; Foreign Countries; *Irish; *Language Patterns; Language Role; Language Usage; *Negative Forms (Language); *Scots Gaelic; Uncommonly Taught Languages IDENTIFIERS Euphemism; Ireland; *Language Contact; Scotland; Taboo Terms ABSTRACT Possible origins for the use of "sorrow" as a negation in Hiberno-English are considered. Much of the evidence examined here comes from English literature. It is concluded that the uses of "sorrow" as negator and as euphemism probably reflect Celtic substrate influence. Structural evidence indicates that "sorrow" negation has grammaticalized properties similar to those for "devil" negation. Geographical and chronological evidence suggests that "sorrow" negation developed early in Scotland and that it was restricted mainly to Scotland and Ireland. Cultural evidence shows "sorrow" negation to be part of a long-standing tradition of taboo and'euphemism, one not unique to Celtic lands but certainly robust in those regions. Although several words in Irish and Scottish Gaelic are partial translation equivalents for "sorrow," only two have attested uses as negators and euphemisms for the devil: "donas" and "tubaiste." Of these, the former seems to have been an especially important word in Scotland and Ireland, 31though it may never have been a full-fledged negator in Irish. The most likely explanation for the spread of this distinctime negation type is that "sorrow" forms were first used by Scottish settlers in Ulster, providing superstrate influence for Irish speakers acquiring Hiberno-English. (MSE) *********************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made * from the original document. *********************************************************************** TRINITY COLLEGE DUBLIN Centre for Language and Communication Studies 1 "Sorrow penny yee payed for mydrink": taboo, euphemism and a phantom substrate U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION PERMISSION TO REPROP' 'CEAND office of Educahonal Research and Improvement DISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION khcCENTER (ERIC) HAS BEEN GRANTED BY is document has been -reproduced as eived from the person or organization originating it. Terence Od lin CI Minor changes have been made to improve reproduction quality _ --- - Points ot view or opinions stated in this VO THE EDUCATIONALRESOURCES document do not necessarily represent INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) official OERI position or policy. CLCS Occasional Paper No.43 ISSN 0332 3889 Spring 1996 CLCS Occasional Papers General Editor: D. G. Little CLCS Occasional Papers report on research carried out within or in association with the Centre for Language ard Communication Studies, and on research carried out elsewhere which is of special interest to tilt, Centre's own concerns and activities. In some instances they present the texts of public lectures promoted by the Centre. The following titles have been published and are available from The Secretary, Centre for Language and Communication Studies, Trinity College, Dublin 2. Autumn 1981 Spring 1986 I.D. M. Singleton, Language transfer: a review 14.D. G. Little & A. J. 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Cook, The relevance of grammar in the second/foreign language learning: an inter- appliedlinguisticsoflanguage teaching(43pp.) actional perspective (42pp.) Spring 1990 Spring 1985 23.Sera De Vriendt & Pete Van de Craen, Bilin- 12.D. M. Singleton & D. G. Little, Foreign lan- gualism in Belgium: a history and an appraisal guages at second level: defining a syllabus, (52pp.) with particular reftrence to the needs of the 24. David Singleton, The cross-llnguisticfactorin senior cycle (19pp.) second language learning: a report on some 13.John Harris, The pobleetal grammar stops here small-scale studies recently conducted at the (12pp.) CLCS (20pp.) (continued on inside back cover) CLCS Occasional Paper No.43 Spring 1996 "Sorrow penny yee payed for mydrink": taboo, euphemism and a phantomsubstrate* by Terence Od lin 0 Introduction For about a hundred years, if not longer, linguistshave offered competing explanations for the sources ofHiberno-English. From at least as early as an 1896 articleby William Burke, some have attempted to account for the distinctiveness ofthe English of Ire- land largely in terms of retentions of patternsfound in the dialects of Britain. Yet about as early as Burke, otherobservers have looked to Irish as a major source, as seen, forexample, in the writing of P. W. Joyce (1910/1988).' To this day,different explanations con- tinue to be offered, and now universalist arguments are among those seen in the literature (e.g. Guilefoyle1986). The diversity of opinions is all the greater since some scholarshave opted for ex- treme positions: Bliss (1984), for example,insisted on the primacy of the Irish substrate, whereas Lass (1990)has been just as con- vinced about the primacy of the British English superstrate.Many more researchers, however,have invoked multicausal arguments, as seen, for example, inarticles by Harris (1984, 1986). Those fa- miliar with other language contact situationssuch as Caribbean creoles can easily recognize how similar the issueof sources is in many historical periodsand in many parts of the world (e.g., Thomason and Kaufman 1988, Mufwene 1990, 1993,1994). * An abbreviated version of this paper was given as apublic lecture in the Centre for Language and CommunicationStudies, Trinity College, Dublin, in Trinity term 1995. 1 Although scholars disagree about the importance of substrate influence in Hiberno-English, they usually agree on what the Irish pattern is that is hypothesized to occasion the influence, as seen, for example, in the discussion by Harris (1986) of habitual verb phrases. Whether or not everybody agrees with Harris that the habitual tenses of Irish contributed to the rise of habitual docon- structions, most researchers probably concur on what the verb pat- terns in Irish are that may have occasioned cross-linguistic influ- ence. Without such agreement, it would be much more difficult to determine the merits of substratist and other positions. Unfortunately, there exist some cases where it is not soeasy to assume what Irish pattern may be the source for a Hiberno-Eng- lish construction. One instance of this is seen in the use of the form sorrow as a negator, which is the topic of this paper. The discussion to follow consists of five parts: 1) a description of the basic charac- teristics of sorrow negation; 2) a survey of the reasons for believing that substrate influence is involved; 3) a look at forms in Irish and Scottish Gaelic that may be the basis for sorrow negation; 4) a pro- visional explanation for the diffusion of substrate influence in the use of sorrow in Hiberno-English; 5) a summary and some thoughts on the implications of this problem. 1 Basic characteristics Whatever the source of sorrow negation, there are three facts that any explanation must take into account. The first is that irrow can indeed function as a negator, as in a citation in Wright's English Dialect Dictionary (EDD) (1898) from an Ulster source: sorraone o' them was equal to Charlie (= not one of them was equal ...), where the spelling variant sorra is used.' The second fact is thatsorrow as a negator is related to other senses of the same lexeme; most im- portantly, sorrow has functioned as a euphemism for the Devil,as seen in another Irish source cited by Wright: her people's as proud as the very sarra (= as the very devil). The third fact is that sorrowwas once widely employed as a negator. There is ample evidence for all three characteristics just stated, as seen in the copious citations in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) (Simpson and Weinei 1989), The Scottish National Dictionary (SND) (Grant and Murison 1952), Traynor's (1953) dictionary of English in Donegal, as well as in Wright's dictionary. Moreover, there is other evidence.