Dialects of English : Studies in Grammatical Variation

This is a study of the grammatical variations to be found in English dialects. It looks at aspects as diverse as the personal dative in Appalachian speech, and transitivity and intransitivity in the dialects of the south-west of England.

This collection consists of 15 articles by an international group of linguists and 7 essays by the editors, tackling a broad range of issues and representing some of the most authoritative work in English dialect grammar.

Individual chapters cover the full international range of English dialects, from the centre of Sydney to the shores of Newfoundland, and from the Scottish borders to the Appalachian Mountains. Soundly based on empirical research, they are rich in data of great interest in itself, but no article is merely descriptive. The editors have selected papers for their value in contributing to the reader''s broader understanding of the theoretical issues concerning dialectology as a whole. As a result, dialectology is presented as a major scholarly discipline drawing creatively on such areas as linguistics, sociology, psychology, history, geography and even philosophy. These and other themes are explored in a wide-ranging Introduction by the editors, which sets the individual pieces and the subject in context for the reader.