ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces an instance of variation in the syntax of the verb in south-western British English. Although scholars have been somewhat vague on the particulars, they seem to agree that there is a linguistic area in England called the South-west. Dialectologists may disagree about the details, they nevertheless agree that West Somerset goes linguistically with Devon and the eastern part of Cornwall. One of the features Elworthy discusses in relation to the Devon-Somerset linguistic border is the use of periphrastic do versus the inflected form. To study the assumption that there is a tendency for West Somerset speakers to use less periphrasis than East Somerset speakers, a sample of 6400 words was drawn from the Somerset transcripts of the Helsinki Dialect Corpus. Fortunately, the Helsinki Dialect Corpus includes 74,000 words of Devon English collected from the border area between Tiverton and the Somerset boundary. Older studies of Devon English do not mention periphrastic forms.
