Appalachia Linguistic Traits Characteristics Appalachian Region

Appalachia: Linguistic Traits & Characteristics

Appalachian Region Southern highland region of the US u Encompasses all of WV, follows east of Blue Ridge, NC in a SW direction into GA and turns to include AL, TN, and KY u Total of 13 States All of WV ¾ of PA East TN

Grammatical Structures A sampling: u Nonstandard irregular verb forms u Multiple negation u Completive done u Preposition intrusion u Double modals u Examples: u Growed, knowed u Ain’t never, can’t hardly u I’ve done it u Where are you going to u Might could, might should, used to couldn’t u

Grammatical Structures Cont. Another helping: u Subject/verb agreement u Positive anymore u Uninfected plural nouns when nouns preceded by measures u Personal dative u Examples: u He don’t want any dessert u u Anymore I don’t care I went after two gallon of milk & came back with two loaf of bread u I’m going to buy me a new dress u

Phonological Structures u u u Intrusive /r/ Intrusive /t/ /h/ Retention (occurs in front of pronoun it) Final /t/ sound Merger of /e/ & /i/ (most common before /n/, /m/, & /t/) Substitution of final sounds in unstressed syllables u Wash = warsh u Exercise = exertcise u Hit’ll worsen is about all can be said for it Once = oncet Tin = ten, pin = pen u Monday = Mondee u u

Lexical Features Vocabulary Word Choice Morphological Features Word Structure

Lexical Features Cont. Reckon, hidy, mamaw/papaw, fixen, kyarn, polecat, wasper u Adverbs: druther, yonder, dang, plumb, tee-total u Plurals: deskus, young’ens u Specific Vocab Word Choice Words used as adverbs Plural Tenses

Lexical: morphological features The a-prefix on – ing participles is syntactically restricted to adverbial complements and progressives; found more extensively among older generations u No –ly on adverbs u EXAMPLE: u “I thought you wanted them fleurs to live, but you’re a -killin’ ‘em” (Kiser in Where the Lilies Bloom) u He explained it real simple; that’s job awful hard to do u

Lexical: word structure u Hour = air u Our = ourn u Directly = dreckly u I don’t care to (positive meaning)