(a term Webster had used in 1806) needed codification, and he aimed ‘to furnish a standard of our vernacular tongue, which we shall not be ashamed to bequeath to three hundred millions of people, who are destined to occupy, and . . . adorn the vast territory within our jurisdiction’ (1828, Preface).

With great vigour Webster tackled the codification of American English, claiming as early as 1789 that, ‘As an independent nation, our honor requires us to have a system of our own, in language as well as government. Great Britain . . . should no longer be our standard . . .’ Despite such nationalistic fervor, Webster wavered about linguistic independence and occasionally looked to Britain as the source of good English, as when he claimed never to have heard ‘an improper use of the verbs shall and will, among the unmixed English descendants in the eastern states’ (1789: 240). Webster’s politics were nationalist, but his heart was a New Englander’s, and New England English struck him as most euphonious. Concerning the pronunciation in the middle Atlantic states of once and twice with a final t (oncet and twicet), he would have overlooked it, he said, ‘but for its prevalence among a class of very well educated people; particularly in Philadelphia and Baltimore’ (1789: 111). Generally recognising speech as the basis for writing, he asked why we should ‘retain words in writing which are not generally recognized in oral practice!’ and in that vein endorsed the use of past-tense forms for past participles (e.g. have broke, have shook, have chose, have drank) and such simple past-tense forms as rung, sprung, sunk, sung, forbid, begun and writ (1807: 186–9).

Webster’s linguistic influence is most palpable in American spelling practices. In 1789, he had proposed phonetic spellings like bred, tru, tuf, dawter, bilt and arkitect but laid aside those reforms in his first dictionary (1806) and ultimately left little in the spellings of his mammoth American Dictionary of 1828 to be judged radical. In his dictionaries and spelling books he propelled American preferences for -or in color, labor, parlor, behavior, -er in center, meter, meager (but listed both theater and theatre), -ize in generalize, liberalize, subsidize (but not advertise), -se in license, offense. Among words from which he pruned letters are the judgment class (without e), the public class (without k), and the catalog class (not catalogue). He eliminated double consonants in such words as leveled, and endorsed check, curb, tire, maneuver and encyclopedia. He entered czar and gave its pronunciation as tzar, entered jail and condemned gaol. Needless to say, not all his endorsements succeeded, as with tun for ton.

The nineteenth century saw the rise of a strong prescriptive streak in the United States, no better exemplified than by Richard Grant White (1821–85). He would have experienced variable usage in nearly all he heard and read, and support for the principle that usage was the basis of correctness was in the air. In Oxford, citations were being gathered as the basis for describing usage in the Oxford English Dictionary, and White contributed some of those citations, but in

dime, picayune, rotisserie and sashay, all cited by Marckwardt (1958). Even the French suffix -ee, used in English for a long time, was revitalised in the US in words such as employee, parolee and recently exoneree ‘a prisoner exonerated by DNA evidence’. Among borrowings from Dutch are cole slaw, cookie, cruller, pit ‘stone, seed’, waffle, bush ‘back country’, caboose, scow, sleigh, stoop ‘porch’, boss, patroon, Yankee, dope, dumb ‘stupid’, poppycock, Santa Claus, snoop and spook (Marckwardt, 1958).

Borrowings from German, as Marckwardt notes, come from an immigrant group that settled among colonists or Americans, unlike those from French, Dutch and Native American languages, who were competitors for the land occupied now by English speakers in the New World. Among terms associated with food and drink, he lists delicatessen, dunk, frankfurter, hamburger, lager beer, liverwurst, noodle, pretzel, pumpernickel, sauerkraut, schnitzel, stollen and zwieback, and in other domains festschrift, semester, seminar, beer garden, Christmas tree, Kris Kringle, pinochle, stein, bum, fresh ‘impudent’, hex, katzenjammer, loafer, nix, ouch, phooey, spiel and wunderkind. When residents of Milwaukee talk about being by Aunt Mary’s rather than at Aunt Mary’s, they are reflecting the semantics of German bei, a consequence of earlier concentrations of German settlers there (Preston, 2003: 235), and a similar German influence likely explains the same phenomenon among working-class residents of the New York metropolitan area.

Spanish is the most prolific contributor to New World English words, including these (Marckwardt, 1958): among plants and animals, alfalfa, marijuana, mesquite, yucca, armadillo, bronco, burro, barracuda, bonito, pompano, chigger, cockroach, coyote, mustang, palomino and pinto; associated with ranch life, buckaroo, chaparral, cinch, corral, hacienda, lariat, lasso, peon, ranch, rodeo, stampede and wrangler; associated with food and drink, chile con carne, enchilada, frijole, mescal, pinion nuts, taco, tamale, tequila, tortilla; in building, adobe, cafeteria, patio, plaza and puebla; in legal and penal contexts, calaboose, desperado, hoosegow, incommunicado and vigilantes; among toponyms, arroyo, canyon, key, mesa, sierra; in races and nationalities, coon, creole, dago, mulatto, octoroon; in clothing, chaps, poncho, serape, sombrero and ten-gallon hat; in a miscellaneous group, fiesta, filibuster, hombre, loco, marina, mosey, pronto, rumba, savvy, stevedore, temblor, tornado and vamoose. The ten-gallon hat worn by cowboys takes its name not from its capacious size, as folk etymology would have it, but from galon for ‘ribbon or lace’, referring to the custom of placing decorative bands around men’s headgear (Laird, 1970: 318).

Among borrowings from West African languages spoken by slaves brought to North America, Marckwardt identifies gumbo, goober, buckra, juba, juke (as in juke box), voodoo and hoodoo, and Carver (1987: 149) adds cooter, juju, okra, pinder and poor joe. The verb tote is often cited as an African borrowing, but according to the OED that association lacks foundation.

From Yiddish, too, mostly in the twentieth century, have come loanwords, many of which are better known in metropolitan areas where Jewish immigrants settled in large numbers. Terms borrowed from Yiddish and cited first in the OED from

396 E D WA R D F I N E G A N

US authors are klutz, kvetch, mensch, nudnik, pisher, schlepper, schlock, schmaltz, schmooze, schnook, shtik, tchotchke, tochus and yenta. Already, as in So tell it already! or Enough, already!, is another Yiddishism, as is the formulation You want I should . . . , which is used in self-conscious imitation of Yiddish. According to the OED, schlemiel, chutzpah, dreck, schlep and the interjection oy! entered English in Britain, not North America.

Other languages have also contributed to the American lexicon, and many such borrowed words have then found their way into other varieties: from Italian, spaghetti, ravioli, minestrone, antipasto; from Swedish, smorgasbord and lutefisk; from Chinese, chow, chow mein and chop suey (Marckwardt, 1958); feng-shui, popular in the US today, is not an Americanism but debuted in the Encyclopaedia Britannica more than 200 years ago.

8.3Modern period: 1900-present

By 1900, the population of the US stood at 75 million, one million of whom had been born in England or Scotland and 1.6 million in Ireland. By 1950, it would double to 150 million and by 2000 to 281 million. In this section we focus on linguistic variation in North American English across regions and social groups. We begin with a brief description of selected syntactic features distinguishing NAE from British English, but for lack of space do not treat pronunciation differences.

NAE and BrE share most, but not all, syntactic patterns. In NAE, collective nouns such as family, staff and committee, and names referring to sports teams, companies, organisations and institutions generally require singular verbs, as in these headlines: Shadow Government Is at Work in Secret; Ballard Team Has High Hopes for Deep-Water Robot; and Ford Is Adopting EPA’s Stringent Standards. Ordinarily, sentences in which a plural verb agrees with a collective noun would be ungrammatical, as in these from the British National Corpus (BNC): Once ITV realize the BBC are going ahead . . . ; the Government were driven to the desperation of calling upon alchemy. A few collective nouns such as police require a plural verb in NAE and BrE.

NAE commonly uses singular forms in compounds like drug enforcement unit and new fair market rent policy (cf. drugs enforcement unit and market rents policy). When the first element of a compound is itself a compound containing a plural form (hate crimes), the larger compound incorporates that plural (hate crimes policy). American and British journalistic styles use appositives of the form

David Owen, a staff writer for the New Yorker, but American style is more tolerant of lengthy noun string modifiers: department spokeswoman Darla Jordan; death

penalty opponent Helen Prejean; celebrity capital punishment opponent Susan Sarandon.

In restrictive relative clauses, both that and which occur, but in news writing NAE shows a somewhat stronger preference for that than BrE , and in conversation a preference twice as strong (Biber et al., 1999: 616).

In reply to a question such as Have you finished the assignment?, NAE and BrE permit Yes, I have, but only BrE permits Yes, I have done. Asked whether flying time from London to Chicago varies, British flight attendants may respond It can do, while their American counterparts are more likely to say, It can – and NAE speakers are more likely to judge sentences like these (taken from the BNC) ungrammatical: Yeah, they can do and I could do, I suppose, preferring instead

Yeah, they can and I could do it, I suppose.

Sometimes the same alternatives occur in both NAE and BrE, but with notably different frequencies. Twice as frequent in NAE conversation is mid-sentence ellipsis of the auxiliary: When you coming back? (cf. When are you coming back?) and How you doing? (cf. How are you doing?) (Biber et al., 1999: 1108). Generally, though, NAE shows less ellipsis, as with combined subject and auxiliary in Like it? and Wanna clear a crowded room? (cf. Do you like it? and Do you want to . . . ?), and with combined subject and main verb, as in Serious? and Too early for you? (cf. Are you serious? and Is it too early . . . ?). NAE also shows half as much initial and final ellipsis (Biber et al., 1999: 1108), as in I tried to and

Yes, no question about it (cf. I tried to press charges and Yes, there’s no question about it). In questions and replies, NAE shows an overwhelming preference in conversation and fiction for auxiliary do, as in Do you have any . . . ? (cf. BrE conversational Have you got any . . . ? and fictional Have you any . . . ?) (Biber et al., 1999: 216).

In NAE, got serves as a simple past tense meaning ‘became’ (She got tired) or ‘arrived’ (when she got home), and both got and gotten serve as past participles, though not equivalently. Gotten is strongly preferred, as in Most Americans have gotten over the shock and gotten on with their lives (cf. BrE No amount of NATO pressure would have got it even on to paper). Have you got one? is a frequent NAE equivalent to BrE Do you have one? (also used in NAE) and underpins an advertising campaign that asks, Got milk? Gotten often means ‘received, acquired’, as in Have you gotten any?, and have got means ‘have’ (We’ve got ID cards now; We’ve got locked gates).

In some contexts, NAE tends to omit the infinitive marker to after the verbs come, go, help and some others (Todd & Hancock, 1986: 477), as in You wanna go get some water? and Proceeds will help establish a wetlands protection fund. Alternatively, NAE compounds the two verbs, as in I feel it’s only right that I come and help out. With patterns of negation, NAE conversation prefers do not have the (don’t have the time) and have no (have no doubt, has none of your character, has nothing to fear) over the BrE forms have got no (as in have got no one to love or have got nothing to hide), have not got a/any (as in has not got an easy task) and have/has not the (as in has not the strength) (Biber et al.,