A linguistic survival of the fittest: its an interesting theory, this.

1
A linguistic survival of the fittest its an
interesting theory, this.

• Ivor Timmis,
• Leeds Metropolitan University
• i.timmis_at_leedsmet.ac.uk

2
The knowledge explosion

• The Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English
  (Biber et al 1999)
• The Cambridge Grammar of English (Carter and
  McCarthy 2006)
• Traditional grammar has not paid enough attention
  to features that occur widely in the
  conversation of native speakers of English,
  across speakers of different ages, sexes, dialect
  groups, and social classes, with a frequency and
  distribution that simply cannot be dismissed as
  aberration (McCarthy and Carter 1995 142).

3
Tails a common feature of spoken English?

• Tails an extra element is added after the
  conventional subject verb x clause e.g.
• a) They all want throwing out, the government.
• b) Oh well, hes a nuisance is that man.
• c) Its going to be a long do, this.

4
Mass Observation

• A sociological and anthropological movement
  founded in 1937 by Tom Harrisson, Charles Madge
  and Humphrey Jennings
• Assembled large teams of observers to make a
  detailed and comprehensive study of the behaviour
  and attitudes of the working classes
• Bolton Worktown was a particular focus of the
  study, 1937-1940

5
From Archive to Corpus

• Written records of fragments of conversations
  through Overheards Indirects Directs
• Corpus of 50,000 words transcribed from the
  archive
• Main Contexts Pubs Sports fields Town centre
  streets Holiday activities in Blackpool

6
The quality of the data

• A high degree of faithfulness
• Inclusion of interactive features of speech
• Inclusion of dialect features (Shorrocks 1998)
• See the data and judge for yourselves!

7
Bolton c.1937
8
In the Pub
9
On the Street
10
Around Sports Fields
11
On Holiday in Blackpool
12
Frequency of tails
13
Tails relative frequency

• Cullen and Kuo (2007) In the Longman corpus
  tails are twice as frequent as ought to or the
  get passive.

14
Tails from the Vaults Form Noun phrase only

• Full noun phrase only 23/76
• They all let us down, the bloody Dutch and the
  Belgians and the French.
• Theyre a clever lot of people, these Germans.
• Pronoun only
• Its not a bad un that, 9 feet 5.
• Its a serious picture that.

15
Tails from the Vaults Form VerbNoun phrase

• To be noun phrase 23/76
• Hes luckiest mon int world is owd Brian.
• Hes no bloody sluvvin isnt yon mon.
• Pronoun To be (copula)
• Youre a nice set of buggers, you are
• Well, its a funny population, Bolton is.
• Noun phrase auxiliary
• Hell get a smash in the finish, Hitler will
• I think its a shame, a jolly outrage, I do.
• Auxiliary Noun phrase
• Eel watch wilt ref.
• E can skip it can yon one.

16
Tails from the Present

• Noun alone can be a tail (Aijmer 1989)
• Demonstrative pronoun alone can be a tail (Aijmer
  1989)
• If a verb is present, the noun can either precede
  or follow the noun (Carter, Hughes and McCarthy
  1998)

17
The function of tails

• Evaluation
• Around 50 of the tails in the Bolton corpus
  follow a clause in which there is an evaluative
  adjective ( e.g. good 10 times)
• e.g. Shes a good girl, that. She never grumbles
  whether thi lose or not.
• Emotional colouring
• e.g. rum, awful, shocking, numb, stiff, bloody
  3
• e.g. nuisance, sluvvin sloven, outrage,
  bestiality, bugger 3 and pillan pillock.
• e.g. the majority of personal evaluations are 3rd
  person

18
Tails from the Vaults - function
19
Tails from the Vaults postponed
identification function

• Well, I think its what we want unity if we
  can get strength through it.
• Its awful, isnt it, Tuesday night?
• This feller must be well in the 33s, this right
  back

20
Tails from the Present

• Tails frequently occur in statements in which the
  speaker is evaluating a person or thing or
  situation.
• Aijmer (1989 137) The predication can be an
  emotionally coloured comment on a situation
• Carter and McCarthy (2006 194) Tails are
  listener-sensitive. The tail clarifies what may
  not have been understood by the listener.

21
Multifunctionality

• Tails are attentive to the online management
  of interaction. This is not, however, the same as
  saying they are after-thoughtstheir
  interpersonal and affective aspects remain
  undiminished by relating them to the pressures on
  maintaining coherence in unplanned talk (Carter
  and McCarthy 1997 409).

22
The centrality of the functions of tails

• Aitchison (2003)psycholinguistic factors -
  memory limitations and processing procedures, for
  example - are the top layer of causation of
  language change
• To breathe is to judge

23
The survival of the fittest

• Ruehlemann (2008) adaptedness hypothesis
• Tails well adapted to the real-time processing
  factor and relational goal orientation.