Language in Society

Exercise 1.2
In rural dialects of the United States, including in Southern Appalachia, some words 
that end in ‐
ing
can take an 
a
‐, pronounced as 
uh
, attached to the beginning of the word 
(Wolfram 1980, 1988). We call this 
a
‐ prefixing because the 
a
‐ is a 
prefix
attached to 
the front of the ‐
ing
word. The language pattern or “rule” for this form allows the 
a
‐ to 
attach to some words but not to others. In this exercise, you will figure out this fairly 
complicated rule by looking at the kinds of ‐
ing
words that 
a
‐ can and cannot attach to. 

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Dialects, Standards, and Vernaculars
5
Use your inner feelings, or “gut reactions,” about language. These inner feelings, 
called 
intuitions
, tell us where we 
can
and 
cannot
use certain structures. As lin-
guists trying to describe a dialect, our task is to figure out the precise structural 
reasons for these inner feelings and to state the exact patterns that characterize 
the usage pattern.
Look at the sentence pairs in List A and decide which sentence in each pair sounds 
better with an 
a
‐ prefix. For example, in the first sentence pair, does it sound better 
to say 
A‐building is hard work
or 
She was a‐building a house
? For each sentence pair, 
just choose one sentence that sounds better with the 
a
‐.
List A: Sentence pairs for 
a
‐ prefixing
1 a Building is hard work.
b She was building a house.
2 a He likes hunting.
b He went hunting.
3 a The child was charming the adults.
b The child was very charming.
4 a He kept shocking the children.
b The story was shocking.
5 a They thought fishing was easy.
b They were fishing this morning.
Examine each of the sentence pairs in terms of the choices for the 
a
‐ prefix and 
answer the following questions:
Do you think there is some pattern that guided your choice of an answer? You can 
tell if there is a definite pattern by checking with other people who did the same 
exercise on their own.
Do you think that the pattern might be related to parts of speech? To answer this, 
see if there are any parts of speech where you 
cannot
use the 
a
‐ prefix. Look at ‐
ing
forms that function as verbs and compare those with ‐
ing
forms that operate as 
nouns or adjectives. For example, look at the use of 
charming
as a verb (a) and as 
an adjective (b) in sentence 3.
The first step in figuring out the pattern for the 
a
‐ prefix is related to the part of 
speech of the ‐
ing
word. Now let’s look at another difference related to preposi-
tions such as 
from
and 
by
. Based on the sentence pairs in List B, state whether or 
not the 
a
‐ form can be used after a preposition. Use the same technique you used 
for List A. Select the sentence that sounds better for each sentence pair and say 
whether it is the sentence with or without the preposition.

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6
Dialects, Standards, and Vernaculars
List B: A further detail for 
a
‐ patterning
1 a They make money by building houses.
b They make money building houses.
2 a People can’t make enough money fishing.
b People can’t make enough money from fishing.
3 a People destroy the beauty of the mountains through littering.
b People destroy the beauty of the mountains littering.
We now have another detail for figuring out the pattern for