Abstract
Although formulaic expressions found in earlier correspondence have drawn scholarly
attention, their (un)grammaticality has not been thoroughly researched. The
present paper thus focuses on the two types of formulae with the verb remain found
in private correspondence: one headed by 1st person pronoun (as in: we remain(s)
your daughters), the other one starting with but/so/also/and/only (as in: but
remain(s) your affectionate child until death). For the purpose of the study a corpus
of 19th-century correspondence has been compiled and analyzed; additionally,
the data from Dylewski (2013) have been taken into account. Next to the corpus
scrutiny, an Internet search has been carried out to verify whether the use of the
formulae at issue goes beyond the 19th century. An analysis from both a qualitative
and quantitative angles allowed for putting forth a number of hypotheses concerning
the origin of variation between -s-marked and unmarked forms as well as their
distribution across letter-types and different geographical locations. The results of
the analysis also corroborate the claim that -s on remain in the structures under discussion
is neither a “part of the authentic local vernacular nor of authentic contemporary
standard English, but part of a specifi c, localized practice of letter writing,
which had its own linguistic rules” (Pietsch 2015: 226).
Go to article