LINGUIST List 5.1510

Wed 21 Dec 1994

Disc: Could of

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1. Joyce Tang Boyland, could of
2. benji wald, Re: 5.1459 Native speaker intuition
3. "R.Hudson", could OF

I have been following the recent discussion of `would of' with interest,
as I am writing my dissertation on the grammaticalization of
`wouldve'/`couldve'/`shouldve' (i.e. modal+`have'+pastparticiple constructions).
[For those unfamiliar with the term, grammaticalization is, approximately, a
type of gradual reanalysis that turns material that used to be more independent
and lexical into material that is more dependent and grammatical.]

I've noticed that the discussion has focused on pronunciation and spelling
as indicators of "native speaker intuitions." Another approach is to look
at syntax. Many speakers consider

 What wouldve you done?

pretty close to acceptable (though of course many other speakers
completely reject this). Then there are also sentences like
(both heard on NPR in the past week)

 They never asked the right questions when they shouldve have. (OrangeCounty)
or
 If this incident had occurred a year ago, I wouldve had
 been more concerned about it. (helicopter in N. Korea)

For now I will make a couple of points of my own, and next time I will
respond to some previous postings, esp. Frits Stuurman's queries.
1) Syntactic data like these can tell us what speakers feel belong together.
 Is the /v/ a verb? a preposition? This data doesn't answer those questions,
 but does tell us that `wouldve' is being interpreted as a unit that behaves
 like an auxiliary verb.
2) Intuition data can be supplemented with corpus data and experimental data.
 For instance, in pilot elicited imitation experiments where subjects try to
 repeat exactly what the stimulus tape says, I am finding that
 modal+adverb+have sequences are much more often repeated as modal+have+adv,
 than modal+have+adv sequences are repeated as modal+adverb+have.
 This is another way to show that `have' (often pronounced /v/ or //)
 is, for some speakers, dependent on the modal. As for corpus research,
 I have diachronic data suggesting a historical trend in this direction.
 I am also working on comparing synchronic spoken vs. written data.
3) As part of my dissertation, I've been planning to get "expansions" of
 contracted forms, like what Tom Cravens described, and I am getting
 subjects from age 4 on up to as old as I can find.

So hopefully in a few months I'll have some systematic data to answer some
of the questions that people have raised.

By the way: does anyone have a good name for this type of construction?
The best I've been able to come up with so far is "Past Counterfactual",
but I'd prefer a name with a more syntactic, less semantic, sense.

Joyce Tang Boyland (jtangcogsci.berkeley.edu)
Institute of Cognitive Studies, UC Berkeley

Message 2: Re: 5.1459 Native speaker intuition

After what I said last time about "of" in "could of" etc., I have to
think about why the six year-old said "could of" was a "long" way to
say "coulda(?)" It's clear she doesn't see "have" in "coulda", and
that leads to other questions about whether the relationship between
the verb "have" and the last syllable in "coulda/v" etc is anything
more than graphic and literate itself at this point in time. Note that
the big clue, the participle after "have" is losing reliability thru
ever-spreading merger of participles and pasts in English, e.g,
"could of went"/"I've went". Only "been" is a true-blue participle
through thick and thin. But it is probably not sufficient to allow
six year-olds (or maybe anybody else for that matter) to recognise
that the "of" in "coulda" is "have". If this is so, then have/of only
alternate (as a function of stress) when there is NO modal.

The other part of the question concerns the association of "of" from
"have" with "of" (from "off").It still seems to me, the little
girl gave no indication that she saw "could of" as containing
the word "of", though it would be interesting to know what she
thinks a word is. Are homophones the same word, for example.
"of" is "longer" than "a" in any case. I think that was the
question she was asked. I'm afraid to look now, because I'll
lose this stimulating posting.... If she insists that the
"of" in "could-of" is indeed the same word, I'd be interested in
her explanation for why she thinks so. Alexis might also be
interested in such an explanation for his folk etymology
collection. Benji

Tom Cravens has hit the nail on the head. Why should "could've" expand,
with emphasis on the second element, to "could OF", with the same pronunc-
iation as OF rather than HAVE?

I wonder if the model of TO is relevant? Looks like a preposition (cf OF),
but very verb-like when used before an infinitive (e.g. negated by
preceding NOT, NEVER etc.: "It's important never to tell lies"), and has
two forms, weak and strong. Also it's interesting that you never get OF
for HAVE in tensed verbs - as others have pointed out, it's only used
after modals; same is true of OF, of course [sorry for the of's!].

Notice incidentally that the "of" in "could of" can't be the preposition
"of" because the latter has to have a complement, whereas the one after
"could of" (i.e. the past participle) can be elided: "I could of."

Dick Hudson
Dept of Phonetics and Linguistics,
University College London,
Gower Street,
London WC1E 6BT
uclyrahucl.ac.uk