Some more on the history of present-tense -s, do and zero: West Oxfordshire, 1837

Abstract

AbstractThis paper analyses the present indicative third-person singular markers in a diary kept by a servant from West Oxfordshire in 1837. There are three present-tense markers present in the diary: periphrastic auxiliary verb do, -s, and zero. However, all affirmative declarative do forms are found to be emphatic, so I deduce that periphrastic do was not present. Zero occurs at the surprisingly high rate of 21%. I examine the possibility that zero was the result of hypercorrection (perhaps due to misapplied schooling, or perhaps due to dialect contact as the diarist left West Oxfordshire and took up employment in London), but this is rejected because -s and zero patterns in the same way as in other southern data, based on an analysis of pronoun v. NP subjects, auxiliary v. full-verb have, non-categorical NPPR, and non-categorical Early Modern subjunctive zero. Presumably, these regular patternings would not be present were the zeroes due to an over-applied rule. I hypothesise that as periphrastic do and older -th became abandoned, an empty morpheme slot emerged, which later became filled with generalised -s. It is this temporarily empty morpheme slot, I suggest, which accounts for the 21% zeroes.