A Grammar of the Dialect of the Bolton Area

Book excerpt: This is Part II of a synchronic study of the traditional urban vernacular spoken in an area determined by Bolton's urban field of influence. It contains a detailed account of the morphology and syntax of the dialect, based upon extensive fieldwork. Together with Part I, it constitutes the fullest grammar of an English dialect published to date. The distinctiveness of the Bolton dialect suggests that grammatical variation among English dialects has generally been underestimated by scholars, no doubt chiefly as a result of their purposes and theoretical concerns, methodologies, and the specific field techniques that they have employed. This is a major conclusion of the study, and has some bearing on the theory of English dialectology, and English linguistics more generally. The need for extensive recordings of free conversation is made evident, if numerous syntactic features are to be apprehended, and fully explained. It also emerges that urban environments are not simply melting pots, in which all distinctive linguistic characteristics are levelled out.