ABSTRACT
The infinitive occurs invariably as the base form of the verb with the marker 'to', and the present participle occurs invariably as the base form with the suffix '-ing'. In Wessex, as Jean-Marc Gachelin carefully shows, the -y suffix occurs optionally not only on infinitives but on any uninflectable verb form whenever a direct object does not follow it. It has become a marker of surface intransitivity. Gachelin's data includes, incidentally, several occurrences of present participles with a-prefixes, as in the line from a Wessex-folk poem, 'To work all day a-meaken hay'. Much of the commentary on the a-prefixing constructions has been impressionistic. Ann Houston's discovery that the pronunciation of -ing correlates with the grammatical subcategory to which it is attached adds a new dimension to studies made on the assumption that the pronunciation variants are purely phonetic.
