A correspondent writes to ask about a construction he came across in a Sherlock Holmes story, 'The Red-Headed League'. He noticed 'that on one occasion Watson adds suffix -s to the first person singular verb in the present simple tense'. Why, he asks, would an educated man use such a construction? Is he referring to himself in the third person?
This is the quotation: 'Spaulding, he came down into the office just this day eight weeks, with this very paper in his hand, and he says: "I wish to the Lord, Mr. Wilson, that I was a red-headed man." "Why that?" I asks.'
The story is being narrated by Dr Watson, but it's actually not Watson talking at this point. It's Wilson who's narrating. So the question is whether Wilson would be likely to use such a construction.
We are given the following description of him by Watson: 'Our visitor bore every mark of being an average comonplace British tradesman, obese, pompous, and slow.' We also learn that he began as a ship's carpenter and now works as a pawnbroker. So it seems quite in character that he should use such a form.
This isn't the third person, though. It's the first person with an -s ending - a widely used regional dialect feature in English, both in Victorian times and today, and common in local London speech, especially in narrative discourse. We also hear such forms as 'I goes', 'I sees', and so on. It's a dramatic use of the present tense in narrative. The rest of the time people say 'I asked', 'I observed', and suchlike.
Conan Doyle does use nonstandard speech in his writing - for example, John Rance's speech in 'A Study in Scarlet': 'I was a-strollin' down ... them two houses... won't have the drains seed to...' - though it's not his stylistic forte. I find the usages rather stilted and tokenistic. But there are only hints of demotic speech in 'The Red-Headed League'. Mr Wilson has a few colloquial turns of phrase typical of the businessman trying to rise in society, such as 'never was such a fellow for photography', 'as true as gospel', 'a pawnbroker's business is mostly done of an evening', '[he] took to coming in only once of a morning', 'he... would come cheap'. 'I asks' is a clear instance of a nonstandard usage, in this story, but it's the only example, and it does stick out like a linguistic sore thumb. Which, I suppose, is why my correspondent noticed it in the first place.
David:
ReplyDeleteMy father, who spoke perfectly acceptable standard American English, by way of emphasis, would occasionally use phrases like "It don't matter."While I haven't read him in years, I believe similar solecisms occur in Fielding's "Tom Jones" and many authors down to the present day. In each case the authors are attempting to mirror English "as it is spoke" at various times, while well aware of the current standards.
Yes, this is normal. I talk a bit about it in the last chapter of The Stories of English. People saying things like 'If it ain't broke...' or (in a soccer context) 'we was robbed'. I don't think this is what is going on in the Holmes example, though.
ReplyDeleteI hear "I says" pretty frequently here in Utah. Do you have any idea how widespread this is in the United States?
ReplyDeleteNo idea. It's pretty common in the UK too, in informal narrative.
ReplyDeleteIs there any stylistic effect being played when someone says in informal narrative by adding an "s" as in "I asks"? If yes, what is it then?
ReplyDeleteMr.Marc Leavitt said:
"While I haven't read him in years, I believe similar solecisms occur in..."
What does read mean in the part quoted above?
I've lived in Portsmouth, Hampshire (England) for the past 22 years. From the outset, I was struck by the local habit of placing experiences in the present tense: "I wakes up", "I goes to work", "I goes down the pub" and so on. That's not to say that you'll hear it everyday, but it's a conversational shibboleth which I've always taken to reflect Portsmouth's seafaring heritage ("Pirates always speaks in the present tense")as well as its strong cultural identity based in no small part on local ties traced back by some families over many generations. No more often have I heard this particular aspect of 'Pompey-speak' than as a safety steward at Fratton Park — where Arthur Conan Doyle, then a GP with a practice in the Southsea area of the city, also played as a goalkeeper for Portsmouth Association Football Club under the pseudonym A.C.Smith. If he didn't hear "I asks" on an almost daily basis in his Elm Grove surgery, he certainly heard it there.
ReplyDeleteIf used by someone who normally speaks/writes standard English, it's a conscious attempt to identify with a more demotic situation. The stylistic effect varies, depending on whether the intention is to amuse, insult, or whatever, or - as in the present example - simply to represent a character's normal way of speaking.
ReplyDelete'Read' in this context means 'read the works of [Conan Doyle]'.
John: great background story. Many thanks.
ReplyDeleteJohn Bagnall
ReplyDelete"Pirates always speaks in the present tense"
This was explained by a pirate character played by Andy Hamilton in The Million Pound Radio Show
It's an old unbreakable rule for as long as pirates ... is!
The usage you describe is common usage here in Yorkshire. It's a tense that isn't found in Standard English and is only used when recounting events or a story.
ReplyDeleteRound my way in Norfolk, we have first person ending -s ('I says') while the third person is without ('he go'). Instead of the neuter pronoun 'it' they use 'that', which gives rise to the story of the two old Norfolk boys watching a new piece of farm machinery: one asks 'Do that do that?' and the other replies 'That do.'
ReplyDeleteMy feeling is that first person with -s is much more common in verbs such as 'ask', 'say', etc than in verbs such as 'know', 'think', 'like' etc. I wonder whether you'd agree?
It's not impossible to say 'I thinks', but it does sound super-rustic - more like a bad Mummerset accent than something one might overhear in real life - but one hears 'I says', 'I asks' practically every day.
The cognitive verbs in English (such as know, think, remember etc. often operate differently from other verbs, as has often been noted in relation to the use of the present simple vs continuous (e.g. I remember more likely than I'm remembering). Dialects vary in their preferences - for example, the continuous form is more acceptable in Indian English. And there are changes taking place, as seen in the McDonald's slogan 'I'm lovin' it'. So I wouldn't be surprised to find usage differences of the kind you mention.
ReplyDeleteDozens of examples of this in every episode of Gavin and Stacey. Barry Island may start a trend!
ReplyDeleteThis phenomenon (and a couple of related ones) has alread made its way into Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_subject_rule
ReplyDeleteThis phenomenon (and a couple of related ones) has alread made its way into Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_subject_rule
ReplyDelete