He divn’t gan tiv a college ti di that, man! A study of do (and to) in Tyneside English

Abstract

The following study uses data collected as part of the Tyneside Linguistic Survey (TLS) taken in the late 1960s in Gateshead, across from Newcastle on the River Tyne in the northeast of England. The Newcastle conurbation is situated in Tyne and Wear; this county and surrounding Northumberland comprise the Northumbrian dialect area. This paper, which concentrates on Tyneside English, has, as its primary goal, to etymologize a set of salient Tyneside linguistic forms, the Tyneside equivalents of Standard English do and to. In Tyneside English, these forms emerge with [ ɪ v] intervocalically, and with [i] (with rich allophony) otherwise. The vowel is claimed to be a result of Northern Fronting; where the consonant [v] appears, it likely reflects a fortition of [u, w], the round vowel’s offglide.