{"id":440,"date":"2018-09-12T13:36:11","date_gmt":"2018-09-12T13:36:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/?p=440"},"modified":"2018-09-12T14:06:20","modified_gmt":"2018-09-12T14:06:20","slug":"whats-the-good-of-would-of","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/2018\/09\/12\/whats-the-good-of-would-of\/","title":{"rendered":"What’s the good of ‘would of’?"},"content":{"rendered":"

As schoolteachers the English-speaking world over know well,\u00a0the use of of<\/em> instead of have<\/em> after modal verbs like would, should <\/em>and must <\/em>is a very common feature in the writing of children (and many adults). Some<\/a> take this an omen of the demise of the English language, \u00a0and would perhaps agree with Fowler\u2019s colourful assertion in A Dictionary of Modern English Usage <\/em>(1926) that “of<\/em> shares with another word of the same length, as<\/em>, the evil glory of being accessory to more crimes against grammar than any other” (though admittedly this use of of <\/em>has been hanging around for a while without doing any apparent harm:\u00a0this study<\/a> finds one example as early as 1773, and another almost half a century later in a letter of the poet Keats).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

According to the usual explanation, this is nothing more than a spelling mistake. Following \u2018would\u2019, \u2018could\u2019 etc., the verb have<\/em> is usually pronounced in a reduced form as [\u0259v],\u00a0usually spelt would\u2019ve, must\u2019ve,<\/em> and so on. It can even be reduced further to [\u0259], as in shoulda, woulda, coulda<\/a><\/em>.<\/em> This kind of phonetic reduction is a normal part of grammaticalisation<\/a>, the process by which grammatical markers evolve out of full words. Given the famous unreliability of English spelling, and the fact that these reduced forms of have <\/em>sound identical to reduced forms of the preposition of<\/em> (as in a cuppa tea<\/em>), writers can be forgiven for mistakenly inferring the following rule:<\/p>\n

\u2018what you hear\/say as [\u0259v] or [\u0259], write as of<\/em>\u2019.<\/p>\n

But if it\u2019s just a spelling mistake, this use of \u2018of\u2019 is surprisingly common in respectable literature. The examples below (from this blog post<\/a> documenting the phenomenon) are typical:<\/p>\n

\u2018If I hadn\u2019t of got<\/u> my tubes tied, it could of been<\/u> me, say I was ten years younger.\u2019 (Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid\u2019s Tale<\/em>)<\/p>\n

\u2018Couldn\u2019t you of<\/u>\u00a0\u2013 oh, he was ignorant in his speech\u00a0\u2013 couldn\u2019t you of prevented<\/u> it?\u2019 (Hilary Mantel, Beyond Black<\/em>)<\/p>\n

Clearly neither these authors nor their editors make careless errors. They consciously use \u2018of\u2019 instead of \u2018have\u2019 in these examples for stylistic effect. This is typically found in dialogue to imply something about the speaker, be it positive (i.e. they\u2019re authentic and unpretentious) or negative (they are illiterate or unsophisticated).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"These examples look like \u2018eye dialect\u2019: the use of nonstandard spellings that correspond to a standard pronunciation, and so seem \u2018dialecty\u2019 to the eye but not the ear. This is often seen in news headlines, like the Sun newspaper\u2019s famous proclamation \u201cit\u2019s the Sun wot won it!\u201d announcing the surprise victory of the conservatives in the 1992 general election. But what about sentences like the following from the British National Corpus<\/a>?<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we’d of <\/strong>accepted it would of<\/strong> meant we would have<\/strong> to of<\/strong> sold every stick of furniture because the rooms were not large enough\u201d<\/p>\n

The BNC is intended as a neutral record of the English language in the late 20th<\/sup> century, containing 100 million words of carefully transcribed and spellchecked text. As such, we expect it to have minimal errors, and there is certainly no reason it should contain eye dialect. As Geoffrey Sampson explains in this article<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cI had taken the of spelling to represent a simple orthographic confusion\u2026 I took this to imply that cases like could of should be corrected to could’ve; but two researchers with whom I discussed the issue on separate occasions felt that this was inappropriate \u2013 one, with a language-teaching background, protested vigorously that could of should be retained because, for the speakers, the word \u2018really is’ of rather than have.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

In other words, some speakers have not just reinterpreted the rules of English spelling, but the rules of English grammar itself. As a result, they understand expressions like should\u2019ve been <\/em>and must\u2019ve gone<\/em> as instances of a construction containing the preposition of <\/em>instead of the verb have<\/em>:<\/p>\n

Modal verb (e.g. must, would\u2026<\/em>) + of<\/em> + past participle (e.g. had, been, driven\u2026<\/em>)<\/p>\n

One way of testing this theory is to look at pronunciation. Of <\/em>can receive a full pronunciation [\u0252v] (with the same vowel as in hot<\/em>) when it occurs at the end of a sentence, for example \u2018what are you dreaming of?\u2019. So if the word \u2018really is\u2019 of <\/em>for some speakers, we ought to hear [\u0252v] in utterances where of\/have<\/em> appears at the end, such as the sentence below. <\/em>To my mind\u2019s ear, this pronunciation sounds okay, and I think I even use it sometimes (although intuition isn\u2019t always a reliable guide to your own speech).<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t think I left the door open, but I must of.<\/em><\/p>\n

The examples below from the Audio BNC<\/a>, both from the same speaker, are transcribed as of<\/em> but clearly pronounced as [\u0259] or [\u0259v]. In the second example, of<\/em> appears to be at the end of the utterance, where we might expect to hear [\u0252v], although the amount of background noise makes it hard to tell for sure.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cShould of done it last night when it was empty then\u201d (audio<\/a>) (pronounced [\u0259], i.e. shoulda<\/em>)<\/p>\n

(phone rings) \u201cShould of.\u201d (audio<\/a>) (pronounced [\u0259v], i.e. should\u2019ve<\/em>)<\/p>\n

When carefully interpreted, writing can also be a source of clues on how speakers make sense of their language. If writing have <\/em>as of<\/em> is just a linguistically meaningless spelling mistake, why do we never see spellings like pint\u2019ve beer <\/em>or a man\u2019ve his word<\/em>? (Though we do, occasionally, see sort\u2019ve<\/em> or kind\u2019ve<\/em><\/a>). This otherwise puzzling asymmetry is explained if the spelling of <\/em>in should of <\/em>etc. is supported by a genuine linguistic change, at least for some speakers. Furthermore, have <\/em>only gets spelt of <\/em>when it follows a modal verb, but never in sentences like the dogs have been fed<\/em>, although the pronunciation [\u0259v] is just as acceptable here as in the dogs must have been fed<\/em> (and in both cases have <\/em>can be written \u2018ve<\/em>).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

If this nonstandard spelling reflects a real linguistic variant (as this paper<\/a> argues), this is quite a departure from the usual role of a preposition like of<\/em>, which is typically followed by a noun rather than a verb. The preposition to<\/em> is a partial exception, because while it is followed by a noun in sentences like we went to the party<\/em>, it can also be followed by a verb in sentences like we like to party<\/em>. But with to<\/em>, the verb must appear in its basic infinitive form (party<\/em>) rather than the past participle (we must\u2019ve partied<\/u> too hard<\/em>), making it a bit different from modal of, <\/em>if such a thing exists.<\/p>\n

\"\"
She must’ve partied too hard<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Whether or not we\u2019re convinced by the modal-of <\/em>theory, it\u2019s remarkable how often we make idiosyncratic analyses of the language we hear spoken around us. Sometimes these are corrected by exposure to the written language: I remember as a young child having my spelling corrected from storbry <\/em>to strawberry,<\/em> which led to a small epiphany for me, as that was the first time I realised the word had anything to do with either straw<\/em> or berry<\/em>. But many more examples slip under the radar. When these new analyses lead to permanent changes in spelling or pronunciation we sometimes call them folk etymology, as when the Spanish word cucaracha <\/em>was misheard by English speakers as containing the words cock <\/em>and roach,<\/em> and became cockroach<\/em> (you can read more about folk etymology in earlier posts by Briana<\/a> and Matthew<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, if any readers can find clear evidence of modal of<\/em> with the full pronunciation as\u00a0 [\u0252v], please comment below! I\u2019m quite sure I\u2019ve heard it, but solid evidence has proven surprisingly elusive\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As schoolteachers the English-speaking world over know well,\u00a0the use of of instead of have after modal verbs like would, should and must is a very common feature in the writing of children (and many adults). Some take this an omen of the demise of the English language, \u00a0and would perhaps agree with Fowler\u2019s colourful assertion in A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926) that “of shares with another word of the same length, as, the evil glory of being accessory…<\/p>\n

Read More Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,8,30,31,22,20],"tags":[],"coauthors":[56],"class_list":["post-440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-english-languages","category-grammaticalisation","category-grammaticalization","category-prescriptivism","category-syntax"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=440"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":454,"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440\/revisions\/454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=440"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}