Separated by a Common Language

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.

A shorter (maybe), quicker and earlier post this month, since I am going to be travel(l)ing without much internet access in September and am (orig. AmE) freaking out* about how much work I have to do before the autumn/fall semester begins. 

In a recent Language Log post, Victor Mair points out a difference in how American and British teens might react to this shirt:

Americans would tend to say I wouldn't be caught dead in it but BrE speakers would more likely say I wouldn't be seen dead in it.

To me, these bring up different images, since caught is a more dynamic verb than seen. Those who are caught are generally trying not to be caught. I wore the t-shirt, but I wanted to avoid being seen in it. But those who are seen can't help being seen. If you say 'I wouldn't be seen dead in it', it sounds to me like you fear someone putting the t-shirt on you after you've died. But maybe that difference in imagery is just me. Most people aren't so literalist about their idioms.

Anyhow...what's the history of these phrases? The OED has American caught dead from 1870 and American seen dead in 1887, then a Scottish-authored found dead in 1923, followed by British seen deads in the 1930s. So it's likely it started in the US, but then got translated a bit in UK.

from the OED

As well as caught unaware, there's the more frequent caught unawares (which might not have been tagged as an adjective in the corpus, leading to its absence from the chart above). Another AmE caught expression is caught short: 

from the OED

So, generally, caught is used with adjectives to describe being in a situation you're not prepared for. With a noun, we also have caught by surprise (more than 2x more US hits in GloWbE). 

But not all caught + adjective phrases with connotations of unreadiness are more American. Caught red-handed has more UK hits in the GloWbE corpus (less than 2x more), and that makes sense since red-handed is from Scotland in the early 1800s. (The red is the blood of the person you've just murdered.) That's a more literal caught, though—being caught by the police (or someone).

*I've only really just appreciated that anything that looks bold when I'm in the blogger editor doesn't look bold when the post is published—at least not on my browser. So, I'm going to start putting bold things in another colo(u)r just to underscore the difference. If anyone wants to give me a tip on how to retroactively change the font across the blog to make the bolds stand out more, please let me know via gmail (lynneguist). 

On my way home from work, I pass the windowless side of an end-of-terrace house, on which this sign is posted:

Such signs are a common sight in England, and not immediately transparent to AmE speakers, who are more accustomed to 'No dumping' signs:

from SmartSign.com

(There's more we could say about these signs, but we haven't got space for that right now. For more on NO TRESPASSING, see this old post on AmE POSTED signs.) 

The Brighton sign is an official local-government sign, while anyone can buy those US examples. The equivalent anyone-can-buy it signs in the UK might have both the terms tipping and dumping:

from morelock.co.uk

Tipping (first cited UK early 1800s), like dumping, relates to tipping, and thereby releasing, the contents of a truck or cart into an area for waste, hence BrE tip for what AmE would call dump: a (probably official) place where the waste from a particular area can be left (for processing, piling up, burial, etc.). The verb dump ('to fall with sudden force') goes back to Middle English, but it's only in the late 1700s, in the US, that it starts to be used transitively to refer particularly to getting rid of waste.  (See this old post for more on AmE dumpster. See the comments of this old post for discussion of dump truck.) 

Tipping or dumping could be legal, but fly-tipping is specifically 'illegal dumping'. Why fly? It's not to do with the insects that inevitably follow illegal dumping. It's the fly in the expression on the fly: that is, in motion or 'on the wing'. Dumping/tipping that is "on the fly" is without prior arrangement and probably surreptitious. You're taking a load of waste away from where it's not needed, and you just leave it someplace that is conveniently unobserved. The term fly-tipping is first noted by the Oxford English Dictionary in the 1960s, and the back-formed verb fly-tip only comes up in the 1980s.

On the fly developed different uses in BrE and AmE in the mid-1800s. In BrE it could be a slang term for begging (or committing crimes) while moving about/around town. (See Green's Dictionary of Slang.) With that extension, fly-tipping makes some sense as a term for an illegal activity. In AmE, on the fly became a description of a baseball that's been hit, but has not yet touched the ground—so you want to catch the other team's ball on the fly. (The term fly ball comes some decades later, as a result.) 

fly-posting 

If you know that fly-tipping is illegally dumping waste "on the fly", then it's easier to see what BrE fly-posting means: putting up posters on the move—all over town.  (Often, but not necessarily, illegally.) If you don't make the on the fly connection, you might think it's about posting (orig. AmE) flyers (late 1800s). But since flyer also comes from that same 'quickly, while moving' sense of fly, you're not far off.

From a Brighton & Hove News article "Council brings in new rules to tackle flyposting and stickering"

An earlier term for this is bill-sticking (late 1700s, esp. in 1800s), which one occasionally still sees in the UK, especially the agentive noun bill-sticker. We rarely call flyers or posters bills or handbills these days, but that's what they were from the late 1700s and into the 20th century.

While it's possible to find uses of fly-posting in the US, it's a much rarer term there. Instead of signs saying No Flyposting you might see a stencil(l)ed Post No Bills. 

(From Alex Westerman's essay about POST NO BILLS in New York City.)

from Pittsburgh Orbit

(This calls to mind my earlier post on POSTED signs in the US, also linked-to above. And my post re bills versus notes. Neither of these is terribly related to the issues in this post, but, hey, someone might be wondering.)

Another bill/Bill joke, seen in UK and Australia, responds to No Bill Posters signs.

from Bill Posters Soundcloud

While you don't tend to see POST NO BILLS in the UK now, it does seem to have been used in the UK in the early 20th century. I've found a couple of these signs (now sold) on auction sites:

From GWRA auctions

An AmE informal term for (often illegal) postering is wheatpasting, after the paste used to fasten the posters so that they cannot be easily removed.