A great thing about being Facebook friends with linguists is that I get to benefit from their daily observations of English. Here's a recent observation from John Wells:
Something I've just heard on the telly about someone who nearly drowned: "If the fisherman hadn't've spotted him, he might not have survived."I keep hearing this grammatical construction in BrE, with extra "have" ('ve) as compared with the standard "...hadn't spotted...".But I have never come across any comment on, or discussion of, this usage.
In the comments, some people claim it's much used in the US, but it soon becomes clear that there's some confusion with a different construction than Wells was talking about. So, let's look at it.
I'm using the News on the Web corpus (because my usual go-to GloWbE corpus isn't co(-)operating in giving me the contractions). There I searched for "had n't have VERB" and got it with a range of verbs:
So, it's looking pretty British, but in Caroline McAfee's 'Characteristics of non-standard grammar in Scotland', she says "as in American English". (Bold = my emphasis, so it's clear which [more BrE] bits of the example we're talking about.)
In Scottish speech, as in American English, there is a sequence had – (ENCLITIC NEGATIVE PARTICLE) – have PAST PARTICIPLE. The identity of the second have, which appears as a weak or enclitic form, is problematic (as witness the writers who spell it of):
‘Ah wouldnae of came if Ah had of knew,’ he insisted (Helen W. Pryde, the First Book of the McFlannels, 1947: 24)
Adams (1948) suggested that it was a survival of English dialectal y- before past participles, reinterpreted as have via the latter’s weak form a. The occurrence of the form in Scotland and the USA is compatible with diffusion from Ulster. Fodor and Smith (1978) offer a purely synchronic analysis, seeing the first have as a modal and the second as the auxiliary of the perfect.
The British usage may have started in Scotland and now is more widespread. But what about that "as in American English"? Well, the historical picture in Google Ngrams gives us a different story from the contemporary NOW corpus. Here it is with had and been as the last verb in the search term:
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ReplyDeleteI say that. I’m Californian with one Scots-Irish great-grandfather. Also I know it’s “have” although my mouth says “of.”
ReplyDeleteWhat I'm seeing in American English instead of "hadn't" done it is "wouldn't have" done it. Extremely annoying.
ReplyDeleteThat's the thing that some of the commenters on Facebook were mixing it up with. But that can be another post another day.
DeleteA great thing about being Facebook friends with linguists is that I get to benefit from their daily observations of English. Here's a recent observation from John Wells:
ReplyDelete...wait. Years ago, John Wells suddenly ended his blog and said he was retiring (...from... his blog, apparently). So... instead, he just moved his blog to Facebook? Honestly, I feel cheated.
There's a big difference between blogging and posting an observation on Facebook.
DeleteI have often seen Americans use "would", rather than "had" in such circumstances - "if he wouldn't have seen him..." Either is a bit clunky!
ReplyDeleteI don't see it as a replacement for the have-less form, but rather as an alternative option. You could perhaps argue that it doesn't change the logical meaning, but the framing can certainly change as far as I'm concerned.
ReplyDelete"If John had closed the gate, the dog would have been unable to escape."
is a more matter-of-fact, present time assessment of causation, looking back at a past fact.
Whereas:
"If John had have closed the gate, the dog would have been unable to escape."
seems decidedly more accusatory to my ear, I think because you've pushed the framing back into the past ("had have" rather than "had"). You're putting the sentence in that past moment of action rather than looking back at it, so in this example there's much more of an implied sense of "Why did you do that John, you numpty!" about it.
Since it is a non-standard construction, why is it taken as read that the extra word must 'properly' be "have" rather than "of"? To this non-linguist, "hadn't of had" makes no less sense than "hadn't have had". Slightly more, actually.
ReplyDeleteBecause that 'of' has developed from 'have'
DeleteIn the expression "wouldn't of done" that is plainly true; but the origin (and indeed meaning) of this construction seems to be unclear, so I don't share your certainty.
DeleteThere's no reason a preposition (particularly one as meaningless as 'of') would show up in the middle of a verb string. It just wouldn't make sense to have a word that usually introduces nouns showing up randomly in a verb string.
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