Elvis, in his tune, Marie’s the Name of his Latest Flame quite deliberately delivers the line “…my eyes are a-burnin’”. Not once, but every time the line is repeated. I’m focussing on the “a-burnin’”
Is this a common alteration of the language? Is it only used with the gerund form of a verb. Is it generally used across the US or only in certain regions such as the south-east? Can one still be authentic to the intent by adding the ‘a’ but NOT dropping the ‘g’?
Not a momentous question, just an opportunity to satisfy my curiosity.
You’re talking about two different things here. One is a grammatical feature of one or more English dialects. The other is a pronunciation feature of many (possibly even the majority) of accents.
I don’t know much about the “a,” but it is clearly a grammatical feature in some dialects, notably Appalachian English. I have a feeling it was around in the Elizabethan era as well. Unfortunately I don’t have an encyclopaedic knowledge of Shakespeare – perhaps someone else might be able to confirm whether he ever used it. I have heard that the “a” might be a contraction for “has.” Even if it is, the form reflects a grammatical structure differing from modern standard American and British English.
The other thing is a pronunciation feature present in many accents of English. And I’d like to point out that it is not, precisely speaking, the “dropping” of a “g.” Phonetically speaking, there is no “g” sound either way you pronounce it. The standard pronunciation is the “ng” sound, which, although in English orthography is represented by two letters, is really one sound, which is neither “n” nor “g.” It certainly doesn’t end with a “g.” You can tell by comparing the words “singer” and “finger.” Written in ASCII I.P.A. they may be represented as [sIN@r] and [fINg@r]. “Finger” actually has a “g” sound in it, which isn’t there in “singer” or in the suffix “-ing.” So, what we have here is the replacement of [n] with the “ng” sound, or [N] in ASCII I.P.A. In real I.P.A., it’s represented as an “n” with a tail curving to the left.
Wait. Finger and singer are pronounced differently? I’ve always thought they rhymed. So how do you pronounce “singer”? Like “sinner”? Same with “-ing”. If I’m speaking correctly, it’s definitely an “ing”. But in most of my conversation it’s “-in’”. But I thought that was just becasue I’m Southern.
I’ve always heard the “a” thing in Southern Black English and some rural Southerners.
I think of this as an archaism that lingers in specific dialects and in verse. My guess is that this is derived from (at + gerund) or (after + gerund). Unfortunately I don’t have access to the OED at the moment, but I would imagine that such usage would be covered there.
In reply to tremorviolet, the pronunciations of finger and singer generally differ in that the one has a hard g sound, and the other doesn’t. To wit, finger might be phonetically represented as “fing-ger,” and singer as “sing-er.”
My office mates think I’m nuts because I’ve just spent five minutes tryin’ to say “singer” and “finger” the way I do normally. It’s hard to pronounce words when you’re thinkin’ about them.
Hmmm, I guess that’s right, I kinda swallow the second “g” in singer. It’s there but doesn’t really come out.
I have a tin ear for sound nuances; it’s made learning Japanese really difficult…
But what is the prefix doing in the verb phrase? By indicating that the action is in effect or extended, it can certainly be said to be intensifying the action, thus, an intensifier prefix.