When Keegan come around

[ostap77]

"De Wa: :ld spun ou:t. 'n he waited. (0.5) Al come around 'n passed him, Al was leadin' the feature, (0.5) an' then the second place guy, (0.8) an' then Keegan. An' boy when Keegan come around, he come right up into him, tried to put him into
the wa:ll."

This is part of a dialog from a Grammar text-book. My question would be about the tense used in the last sentence "when Keegan come around, he come right up in to him"? Is it because of an uneducated speaker?

 

[BobK]

A grammar book? Not the grammar of Standard English. Judging from the attempt at transcribing the vowels in 'waald' and 'wa:ll' I'd guess it was the fashionable argot based on Jamaican Creole. In this case, all bets are off!

But even in Standard English the historic present is possible; and native speakers use it widely in story-telling. Many jokes start 'This man walks into a bar...' ;-)

b

 

[ostap77]

A grammar book? Not the grammar of Standard English. Judging from the attempt at transcribing the vowels in 'waald' and 'wa:ll' I'd guess it was the fashionable argot based on Jamaican Creole. In this case, all bets are off!

But even in Standard English the historic present is possible; and native speakers use it widely in story-telling. Many jokes start 'This man walks into a bar...' ;-)

b

That's where I got it from" Grammar in interaction
Adverbial clauses in American English conversations
CECILIA E. FORD
Department of English,
University of Wisconsin-Madisongot it form"

I was saying that "when Keegan come" is not grammatically accurate. It should have been "when Keegan comes"?

 

[BobK]

Try rooting around, starting here: African American Vernacular English - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia . I wouldn't call it 'uneducated', but it's very different in every way (phonology, lexis, syntax...) from the English taught in schools. In this case, there is no s to mark the third pers. sing; and the way the verb is transcribed betrays the linguistic bias of the transcriber. It's not "He come' around", it's /i:m kɒmæraʊn/ (to give a rough approximation, using - inappropriately ;-) - the phonemes of English, with a home-made adjustment to mark the nasalizing of the final diphthong).

b

 

[Tdol]

A number of regional forms of English can or do drop the -s on third person singular verbs.

I am not very comfortable with the term uneducated. Ain't is a form that is often described as uneducated, yet many highly educated speakers use it. It seems to me to be judgmental of the person as well as the form. ;-)

 

[birdeen's call]

"Ain't" is uneducated because nobody ever educated it.

 

[ostap77]

"Ain't" is uneducated because nobody ever educated it.

You drop "-s" like "She don't care much about it."?

 

[Tdol]

She don't - you'll hear the form used in London and other places, though obviously it's a regional or non-standard usage and would be marked wrong in an exam and be regarded as an error in most contexts. In fact, it can be taken a stage further and you can come across forms like *She come in and I says to her.... :shock:

 

[birdeen's call]

She don't - you'll hear the form used in London and other places, though obviously it's a regional or non-standard usage and would be marked wrong in an exam and be regarded as an error in most contexts. In fact, it can be taken a stage further and you can come across forms like *She come in and I says to her.... :shock:

That's something I think I observe. I think you can come across "I says" and "she some" more frequently than "she say" and "I comes". Is there any truth in it?

 

[5jj]

That's something I think I observe. I think you can come across "I says" and "she come" more frequently than "she say" and "I comes". Is there any truth in it?

I certainly feel that I have heard I says more than s/he say. However, this is true of all first-person -s and third person zero endings, so I have also heard I comes more than s/he come.

I have to add that I happen not to have lived in areas where third person zero ending is common, so others may report differently.

 

[Tdol]

I think Birdeen's right- I says is a more common form than I comes- I can't say why but would imagine it is to do with euphony- I says is certainly the verb I hear most used like this, though living abroad my contact is more restricted than it used to be and I hear English in London for a couple of weeks a year.

 

[5jj]

I think Birdeen's right- I says is a more common form than I comes- I can't say why but would imagine it is to do with euphony- I says is certainly the verb I hear most used like this

Perhaps this is because we report conversations more than we report comings.

though living abroad my contact is more restricted than it used to be and I hear English in London for a couple of weeks a year.

! Do you think we need a new category to join: Join Date, Country, Posts, Current Location, Native Language and Member Type? Perhaps: TSPRIESC (= Time since permanent residence in an English Speaking country).

 

[BobK]

I certainly feel that I have heard I says more than s/he say. However, this is true of all first-person -s and third person zero endings, so I have also heard I comes more than s/he come.

I have to add that I happen not to have lived in areas where third person zero ending is common, so others may report differently.

The zero ending is a feature of what is loosely called 'Ebonics' - see the link I gave in my last post in this thread. The s isn't being 'dropped'; it was never there (except in the English spoken by the slave-'owners').

b