Bolinger Re: Banjos, squeeling pigs, and all that

Douglas G. Kilday wrote:
>
> "Colin Fine" <news@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote ...
> > Douglas G. Kilday wrote:
> > > "Colin Fine" <news@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote ...
> > >
> > >>[...]
> > >>
> > >>'Smelt' and 'spelt' are normal in the UK. I'm trying to think about the
> > >>incidence of 'smelled' and 'spelled', which are certainly not unknown: I
> > >>think they're much more likely in transitive than intransitive use.
> > >
> > > Do some speakers, or most speakers in some regions of the UK, consistently
> > > make such a distinction? That is, saying "The fish smelt bad" vs. "The fish
> > > smelled the bait", or "Donald spelt funny" vs. "Donald spelled his name
> > > funny"?
> > >
> > That's sort of what I meant, but I'm not sure whether or not my
> > suggestion is right. Your question makes me think that the distinction
> > I'm suggesting is not quite as I said: it's more to do with volition.
> >
> > I think that I'm suggesting that (at least in my mind) there are two
> > different verbs, 'smell'-'smelt' that is the unmarked intransitive or
> > transitive word, and 'smell'-'smelled' that is restricted to something
> > like 'investigate by smelling'.
> > I'm not certain about this though, and need to think about it further.
>
> Bolinger in _Aspects of Language_ (2nd ed. [1975] p. 219) claims that an
> aspectual distinction is marked here, with /-d/ signifying 'relatively
> gradual' and /-t/ 'relatively abrupt', but his argument is unconvincing. He
> states: "_Spilled_ seems more natural than _spilt_ in _The water spilled
> drop by drop over the rim_; _spilt_ more natural than _spilled_ in _The milk
> spilt all over the floor when she dropped the pitcher_." I don't agree with
> the second statement, as I would use _spilled_ in both. I suspect the
> reason why some US speakers would find _spilt_ "unnatural" in the first
> example is that those of us who use _spilled_ associate _spilt_ with
> back-country dialects spoken by "hicks" (cf. _kilt_ in the original
> posting), and we don't expect "hicks" to use such florid language as _drop
> by drop_. This is in fact a good illustration of the sort of slipshod
> "reasoning" which pervades _Aspects of Language_. Bolinger cites Quirk,
> "Taking a Deep Smell", _Journal of Linguistics_ 6:119-24 [1970], which I
> haven't seen, and I don't know whether Quirk is any better at reasoning than
> Bolinger.
>
> At any rate an incipient distinction in transitivity between the preterite
> markers seems plausible enough, and has at least a rough parallel in the
> behavior of some Attic verbs with two aorists or two perfects in use.
> Volition is certainly connected to transitivity, but I would need to collect
> some examples in order to make a useful statement, other than a platitude.

Dwight Bolinger (no, I never met him) was one of the most beloved and
deeply respected (at least, until his LSA Presidential Address was
deemed overly political, being explicitly antiwar) linguists in American
Descriptivism. His sensitivity to nuance was keen in the utmost; his
*Language: A Loaded Weapon* is a masterpiece, and his two volumes on
intonation essentially invented the field of study. *Aspects of
Language* was generally deemed useless as a textbook but brilliant as an
essay on language. (Rather like Hockett's anthropology textbook, *Man's
Place in Nature*).

I do not, however, concur with his spilled/spilt distinction. That
doesn't mean it didn't exist in his own speech and that of his speech
community.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@xxxxxxx
.

Relevant Pages