Are non-standard dialects more ‘natural’ than the standard? A test case from English verb morphology

Abstract

In this article, I argue that at least in some subsets of grammar, non-standard dialects are indeed more natural than their standard counterparts. I present data from the new Freiburg English Dialect corpus FRED, for the first time comparing and quantifying traditional dialect data from across the whole of Great Britain. The most frequent non-standard verb forms cluster around forms likedrink–drunk–drunkandsing–sung–sung. The framework of Natural Morphology (Wurzel 1984, 1987) in combination with Bybee's Network Model (Bybee 1985, 1995) is employed to define the notion of naturalness and to explain why this verb class has been strengthened historically, and is still attracting new members today.